Alexandra Petrus

Pronouns: she/her

Email: petrus@usc.edu
Advisor: Anikó Imre

Alexandra Petrus is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California by day, and a game developer and filmmaker by night. Her scholarship resides mostly in interactive media and its intersections with historiography, sociology, and activism, performed through a hybrid of research, technology, and art. She received her MA in Game Development and Research at the Cologne Game Lab (Technische Hochschule Köln) in 2021 and her BA in Film Production (Directing) and German Studies from California State University, Long Beach in 2017. She is co-founder and CEO of Achtung Autobahn Studios, a games studio specializing in social-realist games. With funding from the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, she oversaw the development of Berlin Maniacs, an action/adventure game that narratively and procedurally explores the escalation of violence that occurred during the 1968 student protest movement in West Berlin. She also was Program Manager for the BA and later MA program at the Cologne Game Lab, teaching Media Studies courses and advising thesis projects. Since 2017, she has worked as an animation artist on documentaries and campaigns for non-profits such as PBS and the ACLU. She is currently co-producing a documentary about endometriosis and is developing a multimedia installation that complicates ideologies of femininity and motherhood through stories of end-of-life care. Her developing dissertation consists of a research-led practice toward developing a “mid-apocalypse farming game,” experimenting with procedurally shifting environments and the dynamic forms that labor and leisure take on a dying planet.