Melissa Rogerson

Melissa Rogerson was born in Melbourne, Australia. Through her childhood, her parents ran a shop selling children’s games and books, and her father ran a Bridge club. Her life is speckled with "games" milestones. In 1983, she attended her first gaming convention (for RPGs) and met her future husband. In 1996, she represented Victoria on its Youth Bridge team at the Australian National Championships. From 2014-2017, she managed the Tabletop gaming area at PAX Australia, a three-day festival of gaming held in Melbourne.

A fluent German speaker, Melissa has translated a number of popular boardgames from German to English. She has contributed to the Gone Gaming blog, Boardgame News and The Opinionated Gamers since 2005, and has run many boardgame clubs and events at local schools and libraries. She is a member and former co-chair of Boardgames Australia, is a member of the Steering Committee for Melbourne International Games Week, and regularly appears on radio to discuss boardgames.

In 2018, she completed her PhD research project, titled “Between Cardboard and Computer: Modern European Boardgames and Digitisation”. She works as a lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne, where she teaches subjects in Human-Computer interaction and Information Systems. She continues to research boardgames, with a focus on the materiality of tabletop games as well as on the use and adoption of digital tools in tabletop game play. Her research is available through her website https://www.melissarogerson.com

Melissa and her husband Fraser have two adult daughters and two cats.