Jermaine Anthony Richards is a scholar, writer, curator, and producer working at the intersection of symbolic media and communication systems, notions of redress, and serious game art, design, and curation as a social and political practice. In his work, he is broadly committed to interrogating how computational, aesthetic, and symbolic forms of communication shape what we accept as truth.
As a science and technology studies scholar, he examines how symbolic systems confirm, negate, shape, or disrupt binary notions of life-death, knowledge-ignorance, and rights-deserves. His dissertation examines the function of Serious Games (Racial Justice Games) and whether these games can and should carry redress aims under aesthetic regimes that modulate and overdetermine the charge of all social activities. He combines information and communication theory, Black Studies, continental philosophy, cybernetics, and histories of art, science, religion, and medicine to investigate how computational and mathematical operations within Racial Justice Games engage the contested category of 'The Human.' Through analysis of select racial justice projects, Richards examines histo-social scripts that animate these games’ engagement with "Humanity" and the social effects these scripts enable or foreclose.
As a PhD candidate in Communication at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Richards works with Robeson Taj Frazier (Chair), Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (Duke - Literature and Critical Theory), and Cristina Mejia Visperas. He is also pursuing a graduate certificate in Science and Technology Studies through the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life, specializing in computational, scientific, and mathematical aspects of symbolic system’s associative constructions.
Jermaine earned his BS in Studio Art and Communications Technology at York College, CUNY, where he studied media art (video games and simulations) as engineered social control systems against 20th Century Black/African Diasporic Art under the late Jamaican-born artist, curator, and art historian Margaret Rose Vendryes. This foundation shaped his integrative, cybernetic thinking about symbolic communication systems as instruments within a broader computational and aesthetic control architecture. He also holds degrees from USC's Annenberg School (MAs in Global Communication and Communication: Philosophy, Theory, Practice) and the London School of Economics (MSc in Global Media), where he gained critical global, political economy, and philosophical perspectives for his work.
Richards is an award-winning producer and curator specializing in video art, game art, and extended reality experiences. He is responsible for producing Momo Pixel’s Hair Nah. Hair Nah has been exhibited globally at London's Tate Modern and Victoria & Albert to the Smithsonian Museums, amongst others. The game has also appeared in Vogue and The New York Times. It is regularly taught at MIT, Harvard, The University of Chicago, and Oxbridge. The International ANDY Awards, The One Show, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and the WEBBY Awards have recognized the game for its impact and execution.
Jermaine’s academic work has been supported by the Advertising Club of New York (AdClub) Innovation, Industry, and Media Scholarship, the AdClub Presidential Fellowship, and the LSE/USC Global Media and Global Communication Research scholarship. His creative work has been recognized by the American Association for Advertising Agencies (4As), the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the ADCOLOR® Conference, New America’s Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI), the Responsible Asset Allocator (RAA), the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships, and The OpEd Project, amongst others.
He is completing his dissertation and developing a cross-sectoral advocacy innovation and production studio. When not doing that, he’s either playing his drums or bass guitar, working on his debut novel, or writing publically about media industries, human communication, or gaming dispositions.
Read more about Jermaine's journey here.