Martin Gibbs

Martin Gibbs is a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, part of the Melbourne School of Engineering. He obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2000. Gibbs's academic career has been centered at the University of Melbourne, where he has advanced through positions including Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor to his current full professorship. His research investigates how individuals engage with digital technologies in social and domestic contexts. Key areas of specialization include digital play and games such as video games, boardgames, Minecraft, and voice interactions in gaming; death and digital media encompassing memorials, funerals, necro-technologies, and digital altars; temporality in digital experiences like time-centric play and marketing language in games; social media platforms including Instagram funerals and Twitter death announcements; domestic digital environments such as networked homes and parenting in connected spaces; ethics in game design; AI applications in life storytelling for older adults; and location tracking in cemetery technologies. As a prominent member of the Human-Computer Interaction research group, he contributes to interdisciplinary initiatives like the DeathTech Research Team.

Gibbs has authored and co-authored influential works that have shaped discourse in human-computer interaction, digital ethnography, game studies, and death studies. Notable books include Digital Domesticity: Media, Materiality, and Home Life (2020, co-authored with Jenny Kennedy, Michael Arnold, Bjørn Nansen, and Rowan Wilken), Death and Digital Media (2017, co-authored with Michael Arnold, Tamara Kohn, James Meese, and Bjørn Nansen), and Residues of Death: Disposal Refigured (2019). Highly cited journal articles feature "#Funeral and Instagram: Death, Social Media, and Platform Vernacular" (2015, Information, Communication & Society, over 1,000 citations), "Posthumous Personhood and the Affordances of Digital Media" (2015, Mortality), "Selfies at Funerals: Mourning and Presencing on Social Media Platforms" (2015, International Journal of Communication), "Gravesites and Websites: A Comparison of Memorialisation" (2015), "Social Media in the Funeral Industry: On the Digitization of Grief" (2017), and "Children and Minecraft: A Survey of Children’s Digital Play" (2018). Recent publications address "Bones of Contention: Social Acceptance of Digital Cemetery Technologies" (2023, CHI) and "AI and the Afterlife" (2024). His scholarship has attracted over 5,800 citations across 209 publications and secured funding through Australian Research Council Discovery Grants, including awards in 2023 and 2024 for projects on digital storytelling and related themes.

Professional Email: martin.gibbs@unimelb.edu.au