Hi! I’m Joshua A. Fisher, Ph.D.

Emerging-media scholar, designer, and developer studying agency, interpretation, and participation across AI and immersive systems.
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About Me

I am an Associate Professor of Emerging Media Design and Development, emerging-media scholar, and digital humanist. My research asks who gets to communicate, interpret, act, and establish meaning when computational systems actively participate in mediation. I study these questions across artificial intelligence, immersive media, and interactive systems, with particular attention to human agency, interpretive authority, participation, and the social and cultural contexts in which technologies are designed and used.

My work combines critical and interpretive scholarship, empirical research, community-engaged inquiry, research-through-design, and technical development. Building the systems I study helps me make more precise claims about their affordances and constraints while examining how computational technologies shape human experience at individual, community, and institutional scales.

Research, Design, and Technical Practice

My academic work includes more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and two books spanning emerging media, human-computer interaction, interactive digital narrative, extended reality, artificial intelligence, and community-engaged design. These include An Educator's Guide to Interactive Digital Narrative: Syllabi and Resources from Around the World and Augmented and Mixed Reality for Communities.

I also design and develop emerging-media systems, from research prototypes to real-world deployments. My applied practice has included projects for organizations such as ESSENCE, PIKE Electric, and Waste Connections. This experience informs my scholarship by exposing the technical, institutional, and organizational conditions through which emerging technologies move from experimental systems into everyday use.

Teaching, Mentorship, and Community Collaboration

At Ball State University, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in emerging media, usability and research methods, interactive storytelling, human-centered design, and immersive media development. I also mentor graduate research and creative scholarship across AI, XR, interactive media, user experience, and related areas.

As a university-wide Coordinating AI Fellow, I contribute to institutional work around AI strategy, adoption, and responsible use. Across both my research and teaching, I prioritize reciprocal collaborations with community organizations, interdisciplinary researchers, and external partners. These partnerships allow me to investigate emerging technologies in situated contexts while working toward locally meaningful and publicly useful outcomes.

Education

Aug 2015 - May 2019 Ph.D. in Digital Media Georgia Institute of Technology
May 2018 Certificate of Science, Technology, and Society Studies Georgia Institute of Technology
Aug 2013 - May 2015 M.A. in Writing and Publishing DePaul University
June 2012 TEFL Certificate TESOL International Association
Aug 2005 - May 2009 B.A. in English Studies with a Minor in Political Science Illinois State University
Research Agenda

Mediated Agency & Situated Meaning

Who gets to communicate, interpret, act, and establish meaning when computational systems actively participate in mediation?

Select a trajectory of my research program to see related projects, scholarship, and future work.

Interactive research map

Human Judgment agency · trust · delegation

Trajectory 01 · individual ↔ institution

Mediated Agency & Human Judgment

Examines when people delegate interpretation and decision authority to AI, how trust shifts between human and computational actors, and when people verify rather than defer to automated judgment.

Established roots
Next project Relational Delegation

Institutional distrust, AI authority, task criticality, and verification behavior.

Trace in research record

Career History

2026 - Current Associate Professor of Interactive Digital Narrative, Affiliated Faculty St. Martin’s Institute of Higher Education, Ħamrun, Malta Appointed to contribute to the development of a forthcoming international doctoral curriculum in interactive digital narrative and emerging media.
2025 - Current Associate Professor of Emerging Media Design and Development Center of Emerging Media Design and Development, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana
  • University-wide AI Coordinating Fellow, supporting strategic AI integration, cross-campus coordination, interface development, and faculty learning communities.
  • Co-chair of the XR Certificate and contributor to graduate curriculum and emerging-media program development.
  • Graduate research mentor supervising work in human-AI interaction, immersive media, user behavior, and interactive systems.
2023 - 2025 Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Design and Development Center of Emerging Media Design and Development, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana
  • Established the college's VR Storytelling and Usability Lab, creating research infrastructure for immersive-media development and human-centered evaluation.
  • Mentored graduate and undergraduate researchers, expanded community-facing XR initiatives, and developed an emerging research and policy agenda around applied AI.
2019 - 2022 Assistant Professor of Immersive Media Department of Interactive Arts and Media, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
  • Developed and helped lead undergraduate immersive-media and interaction-design curricula while directing XR production and research infrastructure.
  • Integrated community-engaged emerging-media projects into teaching and research through partnerships with Chicago-area organizations.
2015–2019 Earlier Academic Experience Georgia Institute of Technology · 2 appointments
2017 - 2019 Research Assistant, Augmented Environments Lab Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
  • Designed and developed experimental augmented and virtual reality systems while researching XR interaction and experience design.
  • Led student research teams and developed university-community partnerships around socially engaged AR storytelling.
2015 - 2017 Instructor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia Taught Communication and Culture, Visual Design, and Video Production, integrating media theory, cultural studies, emerging technologies, and community-engaged projects.
2024 - Current Principal Digital Director Pageless Studios, Muncie, Indiana Leads interdisciplinary design and development of applied XR systems, including immersive workforce-training platforms deployed with industry partners.
2022 - 2024 Program Leader - Professional Certificate of AR/VR Development Emeritus, in collaboration with New York University Tandon School of Engineering Provided advanced project coaching and technical mentorship for learners completing NYU Tandon’s professional certificate curriculum in AR/VR development and 3D graphics.
2020 - 2024 Chief Technology Officer The Immersive Path, Chicago, Illinois Led technical design and development of AR/XR experiences spanning cultural heritage, branded media, and public-facing interactive installations.
2015 - 2019 Founder and Consultant Fisher Digital Media, Atlanta, GA Developed community, cultural-heritage, advocacy, and commercial emerging-media projects across mobile, AR, VR, and web platforms.
2012 - 2015 Founder and Consultant Appoet Inc., Chicago, Illinois Founded a digital-humanities startup developing locative and mobile storytelling applications for literature, arts, and cultural organizations.

Guiding Philosophy

My research, teaching, and creative practice are grounded in a digital humanist commitment to meaningful human agency, interpretation, and participation. I ask how the design, governance, and social contexts of technology can expand or constrain the ability of people and communities to participate in computational culture.

I approach emerging media as both a scholar and a builder. Designing and developing the systems I study helps me make more precise claims about their affordances, limitations, and consequences. Through research-through-design, critical inquiry, and empirical evaluation, I examine how AI, immersive media, and interactive systems distribute agency and interpretive authority among humans, communities, institutions, and computational systems. Community engagement is central to this work, and I prioritize co-design, locally situated knowledge, representational plurality, and reciprocal partnerships. Doing so enables me to understand how emerging-media systems embedded within institutional priorities, labor arrangements, and commercial incentives shape whose agency and interests they serve.

As an educator shaped by constructivist and dialogic pedagogy, I connect critical theory with experimentation and making. I encourage students to question what technologies make possible, what they make difficult, and whose interests their design choices serve. Students learn to combine technical fluency with ethical judgment, human-centered research, and thoughtful design practice.

Read my Teaching Philosophy

My Research Methods, Design & Technical Practice

Human-Centered & Social-Scientific Research

  • Experimental & Survey Design

  • Qualitative Interviews & Thematic Analysis

  • Mixed-Methods Research & Usability Evaluation

  • Participatory Design & Research-through-Design

  • Instrument Development & Human-Subjects Research

AI & Interactive Systems Research/Development

  • Human-AI Interaction & Agency

  • Generative & Conversational AI

  • NLP & Computer Vision for Interactive Systems

  • AI-Enhanced Interactive Experiences

  • Data & Document Preparation for AI Workflows

XR Development & Spatial Interfaces

  • Unity (C#), WebXR & Mobile AR

  • XR Interaction & Interface Design

  • Spatial Prototyping & Immersive UX

  • Photogrammetry & Volumetric Capture

  • Interactive Narrative & Experience Design

Technical Prototyping & Development

  • Interactive Web & Mobile Prototyping

  • JavaScript, Three.js, React & HTML/CSS

  • Back-End & Data-Driven Application Development

  • Rapid Prototyping & Iterative Development

Research Leadership & External Partnerships

  • University-Wide AI Coordination & Strategy

  • Research Lab & Program Development

  • External Partnerships & Funded Applied Projects

  • Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration

  • Grant Development & Project Leadership

Critical, Interpretive & Humanistic Inquiry

  • Digital Humanism & Critical Media Analysis

  • Science, Technology & Society Studies

  • Rhetorical & Narrative Analysis

  • Sociotechnical & Institutional Analysis

  • Ethics, Governance & Interpretive Inquiry

Graduate Mentorship

Selected Graduate Research Mentorship

Selected graduate researchers and creative practitioners I have chaired or supervised across social-media behavior, immersive media, privacy, and interactive systems.

View full mentorship record
MA Thesis Chair · 2025
O. Ogunsola

Beyond Likes: How Personality Traits Predict Saving Behavior on Instagram

MA Creative Project Chair · 2024
A. Jamil Pour

Designing a VR Application to Reduce Public Speaking Fears by Incorporating Personalized Scenarios and Virtual Audiences

MA Thesis Chair · 2023
Z. Aamir

User Privacy Considerations in Virtual Reality

MA Thesis Chair · 2022
Z. Reyes

The Impacts of Virtual Reality Avatar Creation and Embodiment on Transgender and Genderqueer Individuals in Games

Academic Leadership & Service

Selected editorial, professional, and public-facing service supporting emerging-media scholarship, interdisciplinary research, and technology policy.

Editorial Leadership
2026–Current Editorial Board Member Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Springer Nature
2022–Current Managing Editor Journal for Interactive Narrative Research, ETC Press
2022–2026 Guest & Special Issue Editor Aniki, Frontiers in Virtual Reality, and Journalism and Media
Professional & International Service
2024–Current Expert Reviewer for XR Open Research Europe and the European Union's COST program
2016–2025 Program Committee & Track Leadership International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS), including Applications & Case Studies Track Chair
2019–Current Board Member Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives
Public Scholarship & Community Leadership
2023 Expert Testimony on AI in Higher Education Interim Study Committee for Commerce and Economic Development, Indiana General Assembly
Always Community-Facing Technology Scholarship Public workshops, open educational resources, community AI discussions, and civic engagement around emerging technology.

Selected Research

My research develops across four overlapping strands. Interactive narrative provides a long-running space for questions of agency and meaning; immersive media makes those questions spatial and embodied; community-based work situates them within places and publics; and recent human-AI research extends them to computational systems that increasingly participate in interpretation, judgment, and action.

40+Peer-reviewed publications
420Google Scholar citations
11h-index
12i10-index
2Books
Node size reflects Google Scholar citations Citation counts: Google Scholar snapshot, Aug. 16, 2026 · unlabeled nodes reveal titles on hover
Scroll horizontally to explore 2016–2026 →
Complete scholarly record · 2016–2026 View Full Publication Record

Selected Research & Creative Practice

A jumping girl in blue overalls.
PlayWard Human-centered AI tool helping child life specialists rapidly generate personalized play and activity materials for pediatric patients.
Preview of Invisibile Cities showing an augmented reality sculpture.
Invisible Cities Community-curated mixed reality platform for participatory public art, spatial reflection, and campus placemaking.
Your Voice Our Voice XR museum installation screen showing abstract visuals.
Your Voice || Our Voice Participatory XR installation exploring how computational mediation distorts and reconstitutes democratic hopes, fears, and expression.
Images of a mobile phone showcasing a historical building in augmented reality.
Mobile Museum of Muncie Community-guided WebAR storytelling making Muncie histories and places erased from the landscape visible again.
A picture of orange faces in the background of the Applied Theater with Emerging Media App, Our Reality
Applied Theater with Emerging Media Participatory mixed reality workshop and authoring platform for community storytelling, media literacy, and social action.
Preview of The Safety Show showing an actor next to an XR prop of a tree.
The Safety Show Devised AR performance making invisible fears, trauma, and experiences of safety spatially visible.
A red title screen with the letters ARES for a VR natural locomotion thriller.
ARES Experimental VR thriller using narrative attention to guide users through impossible-spaces natural locomotion.
A preview screenshot of the City Saga application for loction based storytelling in Atlanta, Georgia.
City Saga Place-based AR experience for Georgia State Honors College celebrating Black Atlanta history through site-specific narratives.
A jumping girl in blue overalls.
Get Real: Financial Decisions in the Real World Branching financial-literacy game developed with the Economic Awareness Council to help foster youth practice consequential real-world money decisions.
A VR scene of an intersection with indicators for danger.
VR Fleet Safety Training Deployed 360° VR safety training for Waste Connections drivers with interactive overlays, analytics, and performance tracking.
The Atlanta United Logo on a Black Screen
Atlanta United VR Golden Spike Experience Embodied VR fan activation recreating Atlanta United’s Golden Spike ritual at team events across Atlanta.
Electrical linemen standing around for a job hazard analysis
XR Safety Training for Utility Workers Sixteen-module web-based interactive 360° safety experiences for line workers, deployed on iPads.
Preview of Essence WebAR filter showing augmented reality effect.
WebAR Filter for Essence WebAR selfie activation featuring Black beauty iconography for in-person and remote ESSENCE Festival participation.
Screenshot of Infused location-based arts app interface.
Infused Early geofenced arts platform connecting people to place-based creative work drawn from thousands of submissions.
Preview of What We Mean a mobile e-literature poetry application.
What We Mean Interactive mobile poetry chapbook transforming WWII love letters through blackout poetry, archival reading, and creative remix.
An illustration of a person on a countryside background in a preview of the Poet's Almanac app.
The Poet's Almanac Context-aware poetry app using live weather and editorial curation to connect literature, place, and mood.
Atlanta Bicycle Coalition 360-Videos 360° advocacy films placing viewers in cyclists’ perspectives to promote Atlanta Streets Alive and safer bicycle infrastructure.

Courses Taught

Communication and Culture
Undergraduate · Georgia Tech · 2015–2016

Explores social media, misinformation, emerging media, identity, and community through communication, performance, and cultural studies. Students apply media theory to analyze online games, social networks, news, and other contemporary communication artifacts.

Usability and Research Evaluation Methods
Graduate · Ball State University · 2022–Present

Examines human-centered research and usability evaluation for interactive systems. Students develop research questions, collect user requirements, design and conduct usability studies, analyze qualitative and quantitative evidence, and translate findings into iterative design recommendations.

Applied Research Lab
Graduate · Ball State University · 2022–Present

Students develop and execute applied research involving strategic information and communication design. Coursework includes research design, method selection, IRB protocol development, human-subjects research, usability evaluation, data analysis, and preparation of findings for scholarly and professional publication.

Creative Projects and Development Lab
Graduate · Ball State University · 2022–Present

Students design, prototype, and evaluate emerging-media projects, including interactive systems, story forms, news platforms, and multimedia applications. Projects integrate communication design, contextual inquiry, human factors, and user-centered design through a research-driven iterative process.

Serious Games and Simulations
Undergraduate · Columbia College Chicago · 2020–2022

Students design and develop games for education, advocacy, argumentation, and community engagement. Coursework introduces procedural rhetoric, systems thinking, simulation design, and methods for translating social, structural, and environmental dynamics into interactive mechanics.

Immersive Media Series
Undergraduate · Columbia College Chicago · 2019–2022

A core undergraduate sequence examining immersive-media history, interaction design, AR/MR/VR development, and humanistic and STS approaches to emerging technology. Students progress from prototyping and interaction design to the development, evaluation, and distribution of original immersive-media projects.

Nonlinear and Interactive Storytelling
Graduate · Ball State University · 2022–Present

Examines nonlinear narrative architectures and the relationship among authorial design, computational systems, and participant agency. Students apply interactive-storytelling frameworks to design, prototype, and evaluate narrative experiences across emerging-media platforms.

Unity and XR
Undergraduate & Graduate · Columbia College Chicago, Ball State University, and NYU Tandon/Emeritus · 2019–Present

Introduces the design and development of XR systems using Unity and C#. Students work with spatial interaction, 3D environments, rendering pipelines, interface design, prototyping, and iterative development while examining the broader technical ecosystem through which immersive experiences are constructed.

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