CV
Education
- M.A. in Digital Humanities, University of Alberta, 2027 (expected)
- B.A. in Honours History, University of Victoria, 2025
- Dip. in Environmental Assessment and Restoration, Lethbridge Polytechnic, 2021
Work experience
- Role Playing Writer/Designer, University of Alberta (Spring 2026 - Present)
- Duties are to design and write role-playing scenarios for a university workshop meant to educate participants on decentralized, community-operated alternatives to modern social media platforms such as Mastadon and Bluesky.
- Game Designer, University of Alberta (Spring 2026 - Present)
- Member of the design team for TownSquare, a board game currently under development at the University of Alberta which aims to help players identify and address toxic rhetorical strategies that commonly appear in contemporary political discourse.
- Duties include iterating and testing gameplay mechanics, as well as authoring a portion of the game’s written materials.
- Sales Associate, SportChek Ltd. (2021 - Present)
- Responsible for greeting customers and assisting their purchases with product knowledge and recommendations.
- Consistently received positive reviews from customers for high quality customer service.
- Game Production Assistant, University of Alberta (Spring 2026)
- Assisted in the design and implementation of the digital components of Make the NetWork, an educational game workshop created for rural communities to learn about building local broadband infrastructure.
- Role was to author webpages with relevant information on the real-world applications of specific game pieces, and code them onto NFC chips which were then fitted onto the physical pieces for player use.
- Senior Staff Writer, the Martlet (Summer 2025)
- Researched, conducted interviews for, and authored a diverse set of articles which were published in the Martlet, an independent newspaper published at the University of Victoria.
- Topics ranged across local Victoria community stories, university policy decisions, political commentary, and creative humour writing.
- Awarded 2026 John H. MacDonald Award for Excellence in Student Journalism.
- Research Assistant, University of Calgary (Summer 2023)
- Researched and authored a comprehensive literature review to help investigate potential applications for artificial intelligence within software engineering education.
Skills
- Game and Narrative Design
- Humanities Research
- Critical media and literature analysis
- Interview design and execution
- Digital Tools
- GitHub
- Python / R
Publications
Dungeons, Dragons, and the Devil: Faith, Authority, and Identity through Role-Playing Games during the Satanic Panic in Calgary.
Czerwonka, Nick. (2025). "Dungeons, Dragons, and the Devil: Faith, Authority, and Identity through Role-Playing Games during the Satanic Panic in Calgary." Honours Thesis. University of Victoria.
Talks
Panic!: Building a Videogame to Understand the Satanic Panic’s Fear of Gaming and the Imagination.
Conference proceedings talk at Canadian Games Studies Association Annual Conference, Montreal, QB, Canada
Panic!: Research-Creation to Explore the Satanic Panic and Its Attacks on RPGs.
Conference proceedings talk at DiHuCon: University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Service and leadership
- Student Life Officer, 2025-26
Digital Humanities Student Association, University of Alberta - Volunteer Lab and Project Researcher
The CRYPT Lab, University of Alberta