CV
Curriculum Vitae
The Host
2024-2026 Postdoctoral Fellow Games as Research, Concordia University
2022-2023 Lab Coordinator/Project Manager Technoculture, Art & Games Research Centre, Concordia University
2019-2022 - Postdoctoral Scholar Department of English, University of Calgary
Positions Held
Education
2019 - PhD Humanities Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University
2012 - M.A. English English Department, Concordia University
2008 - B.A. (Hon.) English Literature English Department, Simon Fraser University
Grants, Awards, Honours
2019 - FRQSC Postdoctoral Grant - $55,000CAD x 2 years Fonds de recherche Québec - Société et culture (Provincial)
2017 - Comics Scholarly Interest Group Graduate Student Writing Award - $200USD Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Association)
2015 - FRQSC Doctoral Scholarship - $20,000CAD x 2 years Fonds de recherche Québec - Société et culture (Provincial)
2013 - TAG Merit Award - $20,000CAD x 2 years Technoculture, Art, and Games Research Centre (Institutional)
2013 - IMMERSe Graduate Research Fellowship - $10,000CAD x 3 years Interactive Multimodal Experience Research Syndicate (National)
2012 - Faculty of Arts and Science Recruitment Fellowship - $12,000CAD x 3 years Concordia University (Institutional)
WIZARDS The Podcast Guide To Comics | Episode 125
Wizards the Podcast Guide to Comics. April 1, 2026.
The Wizard Files: The Wizard Research Project
Wizards the Podcast Guide to Comics. January 1, 2025.
In Media Res: a mediacommons podcast. June 12, 2024.
The Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow Podcast. April 8, 2023.
Sci Fi Gangstas. November 2, 2022.
The Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow Podcast. March 21, 2022.
Sci Fi Gangstas. March 21, 2022.
Who Studies Watchmen in School? Academics Discuss the Highly Teachable Graphic Novel
Syfy Wire. November 11, 2019.
HUMA PhD Kalervo Sinervo awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Calgary
Concordia University News. July 3, 2019.
Academics on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Sequart. February 24, 2019.
Comic Book Transmedia with Kalervo Sinervo
Glasgow University Comic Reading Group. December 14, 2018.
Academics on Disney Buying Fox
Sequart. March 2, 2018.
Press
Woo, Benjamin, Emma Francis, and Kalervo Sinervo. “Framing the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on fan conventions.” Transformative Works and Cultures 38, 2022.
Sinervo, Kalervo A. and Ariela Freedman. “Feeling Your Pain: Empathy in Comics.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2021.
Sinervo, Kalervo A. “Pirates and Publishers: day-and-date, comics scanning, and the digital milieu.” The Comics World: Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Their Publics. Ed. Benjamin Woo. University Press of Mississippi, 2021.
Wershler, Darren, Shannon Tien, and Kalervo A. Sinervo. “The History of Digital Comics.” Comic Studies: A Guidebook. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020.
Wershler, Darren, and Kalervo A. Sinervo. “Marvel and the Form of Motion Comics.” Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe. Ed. Matt Yockey. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2017.
Jong, Carolyn, Rob Gallagher, and Kalervo A. Sinervo. “Who Wrote the Elder Scrolls? Modders, Developers, and the Mythology of Bethesda Softworks.” Loading… Volume 10, No. 16 (2017). <http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/169>
Sinervo, Kalervo A. “Gotham on the Ground: transmedia meets topography in the environments of the Arkham videogame series.” Wide Screen 6.1. Leeds, UK: Subaltern Media, 2016.
Sinervo, Kalervo A. “Mapping Gotham.” First Person Scholar. July 1, 2015. <http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/mapping-gotham/>
Wershler, Darren, Kalervo A. Sinervo, and Shannon Tien. “Unauthorized Comic Book Scanners.” Educational, Psychological, and Behavioral Considerations in Niche Online Communities. Eds. Vivek Venkatesh, Jason Wallin, Juan Carlos Castro, and Jason Lewis. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2014.
Wershler, Darren, Shannon Tien, and Kalervo A. Sinervo. “A Network Archaeology of Unauthorized Comic Book Scans.” Amodern 2. Eds. Nicole Starosielski, Braxton Soderman, and cris cheek. 2013. <http://amodern.net/article/a-network-archaeology-of-unauthorized-comic-book-scans/>
Sinervo, Kalervo A. “The Ballad of Doctor Richardson.” Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: Independents and Underground Classics. Eds. Bart Beaty and Stephen Weiner. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2012. 81-84.
Select Publications
With Rilla Khaled. “Untangling: A Method for Design Materialisation.”
Canadian Game Studies Association. Montreal, June 2025.
With Rilla Khaled. “What Happens When We Materialise Game Design? A Roundtable with the Games as Research Project.”
Canadian Game Studies Association. Montreal, June 2024.
With Anna Peppard and Benjamin Woo. “Workshopping Wizard: Revisiting Comics’ ‘Long 1990s.’”
Canadian Society for the Study of Comics. Montreal, June 2024.
With Anna Peppard and Benjamin Woo. “The Guide to Comics (Fandom): Constructing Geek Culture in Wizard Magazine.”
Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Chicago, March 2022.
With Emma Francis and Benjamin Woo. “Framing Con Events during the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
Fan Studies Network North America. Online, October 2021.
“Halftones to LEDs: The Digital Materiality of Comics Colour .”
International Comic Arts Forum Virtual Roundtable Series. Online, April 2021.
With Ariela Freedman. “Jagged Lines and X’es: A Lexicon of Pain in Comics.”
Canadian Society for the Study of Comics. Vancouver, June 2019.
“LEGO Batman and the Licensing Network.’’
Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Toronto, March 14-18, 2018.
“Distribution Shuffle: On the Piracy-Copyright Dialectic in Digital Comics.”
Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Chicago, March 22-26, 2017.
“Author, Author: How we think about videogame authorship (and why we’re so, so wrong).”
Canadian Game Studies Association, Congress. Calgary, June 1-3, 2016.
“Comics Hearts Games.”
Comics vs Games, Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Toronto, May 14-15, 2016. Invited Presentation.
With Natalie Zina Walschots. “LYING: Narrative (Un)Reliability and Believing Victims in Vaughan & Staples’ Saga.”
Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Annual Conference. Toronto, May 12-13, 2016.
“Time is Money: social games and the engagement wheel.”
Canadian Game Studies Association, Congress. Ottawa, June 2-5, 2015.
With Natalie Zina Walschots. “Women in Refrigerators, Hawkeye Initiatives, and the Ass-vengers: a recent history of gender representation in comics.”
Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Annual Conference. Toronto, May 7-8, 2015.
“Gaming Gotham: transmedia geography and the Batman: Arkham game series.”
Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Montreal, March 25-29, 2015.
With Carolyn Jong, Rob Gallagher. “A History of Happy Accidents, or Who Wrote the Elder Scrolls?”
Histoire culturelle du jeu vidéo/Cultural History of Video Games Symposium. Montreal, June 27-28, 2014.
“Glitching Skyrim: Mod Installation as Game Design.”
Canadian Game Studies Association Congress. St. Catharines, May 28-29, 2014.
With Darren Wershler. “Digital Marvel, Branding, and the Bias of Media.”
Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Chicago, March 6-10, 2013.
“A Never-Ending Exercise: Facebook, Creative Production, and Narratives of Self.”
Friendship as Praxis: Towards Community (Cultural and Otherwise) SFU Graduate Conference. Vancouver, June 22-23, 2012.
Select Presentations
May 2018....................... Canadian Society for the Study of Comics, Toronto
Conference Committee Co-Chair
May 31-June 2, 2017....................... Canadian Game Studies Association, Congress, Toronto
Game Demo Track Chair
March 23, 2017........................ Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago
“Black Boxes, Walled Gardens: Political Economies of Copyright
and Digital Rights Management Technologies”
Panel Organizer
November 25, 2016........................................................................... I/O: Input/Output, Montreal
Symposium on Computational Subcultures
Co-Organizer with Skot Deeming
June 1-3, 2016................................... Canadian Game Studies Association, Congress, Calgary
Game Demo Track Chair
May 12-13, 2016.. Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Annual Conference, Toronto
Conference Committee Co-Chair
April 28, 2016...................................................... “Overcoming the Visual Interface: a new tool
for augmented aurality games,” Montreal
Guest keynote given by Lauren Burr, IMMERSe Graduate Speaker Exchange Program
Organizer
March 4-5, 2016.............. Annual Graduate Humanities Conference at Concordia, Montreal
Consumption and Detritus: Stories of Destruction and Reconstruction
A/V coordinator
May 7-8, 2015....... Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Annual Conference, Toronto
Conference Committee Co-Chair
March 28, 2015...................... Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Montreal
“Spaces of Play: Geographies and Cartographies of Games and Gaming”
Panel Organizer
March 13-14, 2015......... Annual Graduate Humanities Conference at Concordia, Montreal
Re-Originality: Curation, Plagiarism, & Cultures of Appropriation
Organizing and Vetting Committee; A/V coordinator
February 13, 2015............... The Building Blocks of Life: A Minecraft Colloquium, Montreal
Organizer
February 10-12, 2015.................................................... IMMERSe Summit Concordia, Montreal
Organizer
May 8-10, 2014.... Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Annual Conference, Toronto
Conference Committee Co-Chair
March 28, 2014....................... Canadian Game Studies Association Congress, St. Catharines
“Playing, Bugging, Breaking: Modding & Skyrim”
Panel Organizer with Carolyn Jong and Rob Gallagher
March 1-3, 2012......................................... Concordia English Graduate Colloquium, Montreal
Enunciating the End: Apocalypses, Textual Futures, and What Comes Next
Conference Committee Co-Chair
March 24-26, 2011.................................... Concordia English Graduate Colloquium, Montreal
Attending (to) the Party: Orientations and Simulacra of Public and Private Sites
Organizing Committee; Creative Reading and Wrap Party Co-Chair
Conference and Panel Organizing
Instructor..................................................................... ENGL 251: The Graphic Novel (4 sections)
Department of English, Concordia University, Fall 2014-Winter 2018
Teaching Assistant.................................. ENGL 262: British Literature 1660-1900 (2 sections)
Department of English, Concordia University, Fall 2011-Winter 2012
Teaching
2025-2026......................................................................Futures Committee
Canadian Society for the Study of Comics/Société Canadienne pour l’etude de la bande dessinée
2025......................................................................Postdoctoral Fellows Ad Hoc Committee
Concordia Association of Research Employees Union
2020-2023...................................................................... Affiliate Researcher
RoCCET Lab for Research on Comiccons, Entertainment, and Transmedia
2021...................................................................... Equity and Anti-Racism Committee
Canadian Society for the Study of Comics/Société Canadienne pour l’etude de la bande dessinée
2014-2018...................................................................... Vice President Communications (English)
Canadian Society for the Study of Comics/Société Canadienne pour l’etude de la bande dessinée
2017-2018.................................................................................. Graduate Student Representative
Transmedia Studies Scholarly Interest Group, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
2017-2018.................. Information Liaison, Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre
2014-2015.............................................................. Team Leader, Minecraft Mod Research Team
2011-2015.......................................................................................... Lab manager, Ampersand Lab
2011-2012....................... Graduate student representative, Concordia English Department
Service
FLUENT
English
BASIC
French