Beles Games

Research

My academic work follows three distinct threads, listed in order of significance:

Eritrean Cultural Heritage

The primary thread of my published work involves the study of Eritrean rituals and material culture, which was inspired by my very early experiences working as a research assistant at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center. At present, my dissertation is focused on the adoption of Eritrean and Ethiopian food recipes as a lens to examine food automation, constructing a framework committed to the material analysis of algorithmic technologies. Published work and conference presentations related to Eritrean heritage have been included below:

  • Isaac, J. (2026). ‘Who Buys Bees is a Fool, Who Sells Bees is a Fool’; Indigenous Re/Imaginations of the Algorithm as Recipe. In Made to Measure; Made to Measure: A Graduate Conference. Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). 2 April 2026 – 3 April 2026.
  • Isaac, J. (2026). Life After Extraction; Willful Re/Reading in the Fixed Accounts of Oral Story/Tellings. International Review of Qualitative Research, 18(4), 390-412.
  • Isaac, J. (2025). Italiani Brava Gente; A Resistive Board Game of ‘The Good Italian’ Myth. In American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS) 2025: Performing/Surviving/Resisting. University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA). 13 March 2025 – 15 March 2025.
  • Isaac, J. (2022). The Persistence of Life and Play in በርበረ [ber-be-re] Transcripts. Qualitative Inquiry, 28(10), 1077-1086.

Games as Methods

A secondary yet equally significant thread of my research involves the design of games as public outreach (in which academic themes and concepts become illustrated through game mechanics) and qualitative research methods (in which practices such as archival work become reimagined through critical play). While these games and their associated research are highlighted elsewhere in this website, a sample of published articles and conference presentations which discuss these games has been highlighted below:

  • Teweldemedhin, J. A. (accepted for publication). Race to Citizenship: The Racing Game of Labor, Capital, and Prerequisite Cases. On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 12.
  • Teweldemedhin, J. A. (accepted for publication). Italiani Brava Gente; a Resistive Board Game of ‘The Good Italian’ Myth. Fwd: Museums Journal 11(1).
  • Isaac, J. (2023). Land to the Tillers: A Cooperative Deck-Building Legacy Game of Witch-Hunts and Enclosures. The Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power 12(1), 74-105.
  • Isaac, J. (2022). Land to the Tillers! Board Game Showcase. In International Conference on Meaningful Play. Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI). 12 October 2022 – 14 October 2022.
  • Isaac, J. (2021). Racialization as a Framework for Race-Based Games. In GENeration Analog; The Tabletop Games and Education Conference. Online. 4 August 2022 – 5 August 2022.
  • Isaac, J. (2019). Pics or it didn’t happen: The artwork formerly known as heritage in Google Street Art. Convergence 25(3), 374-392.
  • Isaac, J. (2016). Situations of encounter: Playful gazes in street art detours. Conjunctions 3(1), 1-23.

Misinformation

Finally, in my former life as the Head of Fact Checking at TED Conferences (and later a freelance fact checker for organizations such as WaitWhat), an important thread of my work involved examining how un/intended falsehoods became constructed and spread, with specific interest in why certain forms of information became spread over others. A sample of this work has been included below:

  • Park, J., Ellezhuthil, R. D., Isaac, J., Mergerson, C., Feldman, L., & Singh, V. (2023). Misinformation Detection Algorithms and Fairness across Political Ideologies: The Impact of Article Level Labeling. In 15th ACM Web Science Conference 2023. 30 April 2023 – 1 May 2023.
  • Student Research Assistant (Sept 2020-May 2023). EAGER: SaTC: Early-Stage Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Fair and Accurate Information Quality Assessment Algorithm. Award Abstract Number: 1915790. PIs: Vivek Singh (Information Science) and Lauren Feldman (Journalism and Media Studies), Rutgers University.
  • Isaac, J. (2020). Why people fall for misinformation. TED-Ed. https://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-people-fall-for-misinformation-joseph-isaac
  • Isaac, J. (2019 Sep 26). Moderated a discussion with Taiwan’s Digital Minister, Audrey Tang, on the topics of Open Governance, Disinformation, and Media Literacy at The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY. Event organized by the Foreign Press Association and co-sponsored by the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office in New York.