I received a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Toronto, an MA in Media Production from Ryerson University, and a BFA in Film and Video Production from York University. Prior to my doctoral training, I was an award-winning documentary filmmaker and multimedia artist with over ten years of professional experience in the creative industries.

The main focus of my humanistic research is personal storytelling through digital game design. I organize game jams and draw on arts-based and participatory methods to study the self-care practices of game designers making games about mental health and disability. I engage underserved communities and marginalized voices in digital game creation and harness game design practice to theorize selfhood, subjectivity, and agency. I am currently lead researcher on a SSHRC Insight Development Grant exploring autobiographical game design as a sense-making tool for youth living with opioid addiction. This project examines the practice of making games as a modality for building community health, and tool for fighting the stigma and social isolation surrounding substance use.

I am the recipient of several filmmaking awards, including:

• Best Documentary at the San Francisco New Media Film Festival 
• Gordon F. Keeble Award from Ryerson University for my semi-autobiographical machinima
• Second Bodies (2009)

I have also received grant awards for my documentaries on the immigrant experience—Just Arrived (2004) and Portrait of a Street: The Soul and Spirit of College (2001)—from Rogers OMNI Television, The National Film Board of Canada, and Toronto Arts Council.

I am willing to supervise graduate students in the areas of game design, interactive narrative, autobiographical visual media, disability studies, inclusive design and arts-based research.

• Danilovic, S., & de Voogt, A. (2020). Making Sense of Abstract Board Games: Toward a Cross-Ludic Theory, Games and Culture. https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/MQH6WRZIIXT7SGITZYEH/full
• Danilovic, S. (2019). Game design therapoetics: Authoring the computer game autopathography. Meaningful Play 2018 Conference Proceedings, ETC Press.
• Danilovic, S. (2019). Reimagining first-person shooter games through sociopoiesis. UnMediated: Journal of Politics and Communication, 1(2), 138-143.
• Danilovic, S. (2013). Virtual lens of exposure: Aesthetics, theory, and ethics of documentary filmmaking in Second Life. J. Ng, (Ed.), Understanding machinima: Essays on filmmaking in virtual worlds, 167-186. London: Bloomsbury.
• Danilovic, S. (2010). Autism and Second Life: An introduction. Journal on Developmental Disabilities, 15(3), 125-129.