Can you give a brief summary of your career to date, and the journey that brought you to the University of Edinburgh Business School?
I did my PhD in the Management Science department of the University of Strathclyde. During my PhD I developed an interest in Gamification, initially looking at it as an approach to facilitate interactions and knowledge flow in organisations and improve organisational performance. After graduating in 2018 I got a job at Heriot-Watt University and started developing my gamification research there, combining it with systems thinking. In 2023, I moved to the University of Edinburgh Business School.
You mentioned your interest and focus on gamification. Could you briefly explain what this is for anyone who is unfamiliar with the concept?
Gamification refers to the use of game elements and games for purposes other than entertainment. For example, it can be used to nudge people towards more sustainable behaviour, or to create environments for social exchange.
If you had to give your ‘elevator pitch’ and explain your research and/or teaching in layperson’s terms, how would you describe it?
My research helps people to understand complexity in systems and make better decisions by exposing them to trade-offs and competing goals within the systems. This might be deciding on the best strategy for coastal protection from flooding or expressing your opinion about the proposed policies in ways that are meaningful to policymakers. What I'm interested in is how stakeholders shape their opinions, make sense of reality and arrive at a decision within a gamified environment and how this experience shapes their decisions in real life.
Is there anything exciting in the pipeline that you're currently working on?
One of the projects I'm working on just now looks at coastal protection in Suriname, South America. In this project, we are developing a game for stakeholders to explore different coastal protection solutions, both hard engineered and nature-based, and test how effective these solutions are against different types of events. This game will be a starting point for the stakeholders to build consensus about the most effective strategies in Suriname. I am interested in how opinions are surfaced and shaped and what triggers the emergence of consensus within the game.
My other major project has to do with developing template games for public consultations. I started this work with the Lake District National Park Authorities and developed the original game called 'Otter Power' that invites communities to prioritise goals and policies on a given topic and share their opinions about different policies. Right now, I am working on developing a new game for contextualising risks. One of the first test cases will be looking at over-tourism in Edinburgh and understanding how it impacts local communities.
What do you enjoy most about your teaching and/or research? What challenges or excites you across both areas?
In teaching I'm most inspired when I see students open their minds to new ideas. In research, it's always inspiring (and at the same time a bit terrifying) to approach a new, complex, and messy problem – and then, through the research process, bring clarity and understanding to it.
What do you enjoy most about working at UEBS?
What I enjoy most is working with the people at the Business School. It is a truly unique, inspiring and very diverse community, where everyone I met works towards the same goal - making the world a better place.
What advice would you give to your younger self, just about to leave home and embark on further education?
The advice I would give myself is to embark upon further education earlier.
What one book, piece of music, and beloved item would you take to a desert island?
Book: The SAS Survival Handbook
Music: Eddie Vedder - Guaranteed
Beloved Item: My tango shoes (although completely useless in the desert)
If you could invite anyone (past or present) over for dinner, who would it be and why?
I would invite Gene Roddenberry to ask him what advice he would give to his younger self and what he would take with him to a desert island.
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
Tibet. There, you can touch the sky.
Research Spotlight: Dr Agnessa Spanellis
Dr Agnessa Spanellis (Senior Lecturer in Systems Thinking) is enhancing public consultations in the UK by integrating gaming dynamics to engage citizens more effectively.
Agnessa Spanellis and colleagues developed an adaptable game that was trialled successfully in the Lake District and Cairngorms National Parks, showing that gamification leads to more nuanced and constructive feedback from the public and ensures a more inclusive consultation process by engaging underrepresented groups. This approach is complemented with data processing using large language models that simplifies analysis for policymakers.
[Dr Agnessa Spanellis]
Hi, I'm Agnessa Spanellis. I’m a Senior Lecturer of Systems Thinking at the University of Edinburgh Business School.
The project that prompted this impact started with our ambition to transform public consultations in the UK. According to the World Bank, the UK scores quite poorly in terms of their engagement with the citizens and public consultations in among the list of OECD countries. And we wanted to change that by creating a game that would allow the people to have a more meaningful engagement with the consultations and with the policymakers.
Local authorities are increasingly being told that they need to engage with citizens and conduct public consultations to develop their policies. However, they find it increasingly difficult firstly to formulate the questions, then to engage with citizens and finally to translate those results of consultations into policy.
Citizens also find it quite difficult to engage with policymakers. Partly they don't know how to provide the meaningful input for the policymakers, partly their input is usually framed quite negatively, which is quite difficult to form a constructive basis for an input into policies and particularly underrepresented groups and certain other groups of citizens lack confidence to provide the meaningful input, and their voice is quite often not heard.
We've developed a template game that can be adapted to any context of any public consultations, and we've trialled this game with the Lake District and Cairngorms National Parks. From the first trial, what we found was that people provided much more nuanced and constructive feedback on the policies. That was much easier to work with for the policymakers. We also found that people found it easier to express their opinion, and the game creates space for everybody to contribute equally.
We've combined these trials with the natural language processing analysis that will simplify the analysis of large volumes, of data that is generated from this type of public consultations. And this will free up lots of space for policymakers to instead, spend this time on things that actually matter.
One of the obstacles that we're trying to overcome just now is, sensitive treatment of personal data that is generated through these consultations where we can then trying to find a solution that would, treat this data sensitively without compromising the security and privacy of individuals who participate in these consultations.
I believe that everybody should, have a say in how we govern our lives and organise our society. I want to help create a more participatory decision-making process in policymaking, in the democratic society.
Thank you for listening.
Senior Lecturer in Systems Thinking