Dr Adam Clayden
Senior Lecturer in BSc (Hons) Games Development
- Phone
- +44 (0)1473 338220
- a.clayden@uos.ac.uk
- School/Directorate
- School of Business, Arts, Social Sciences and Technology
- Adam Clayden ORCID
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Dr. Adam Clayden is currently a Senior Lecturer in Game Development focusing on technical, level, and user experience design. He is also a Practice Researcher, which means he actively designs and develops games in addition to his teaching commitments. He is currently designing a cozy nature restoration game with the aim of reshaping our cultural and societal perception of plants. Adam received his PhD in Psychology from the ºüÀêÊÓƵ of Edinburgh in 2019 and graduated with a first class (Hons) BSc in Computer Gaming Technology from Anglia Ruskin ºüÀêÊÓƵ in 2014. His skills involve expert knowledge of developing games in both Unity and the Unreal Engine, with specialist knowledge of technical design and user experience design. This expertise became nationally recognised upon being shortlisted for the Innovative Teaching Award at the UK Games Education Awards. He is also actively involved as a site organiser and game developer for the Global Game Jam.
Adam is currently accepting PhD students, especially those interested in practice-based or practice-led game development research. If this interests you or you'd like to know more, please reach out via email.
Adam teaches on the following modules:
- Introduction to Games Studies
- Group Project
- Managing Games Production
- Technical and Level Design
- Extended Project (as a supervisor)
Adam's research is primarily practice based and focuses on new approaches to the design and development of experiential goals in games, and documenting that tacit knowledge and design processes for others to analyse, experience and learn from.
Grants Awarded:
- UKRI Suffolk Stories: A Participatory Design Research Approach to Developing a Game Demonstrator for Heritage Trails. £10,000
- CELT The exploration of stealth assessment and immersive learning through Technology Rich Environments. £5,000
- EIRA Digital Hub Project. £20,000
- GX Programme on the development of an augmented reality application on food provenance. £11,000
- GX Programme on R&D tools development for the games industry. £11,000
Guest lectures:
- ºüÀêÊÓƵ of Edinburgh School of Informatics
- ºüÀêÊÓƵ of Edinburgh Human Cognitive Neuroscience
Thesis:
- Clayden, Adam (2019) Doctoral thesis, ºüÀêÊÓƵ of Edinburgh.
- Clayden, A. C., Fisher, R. B., & Nuthmann, A. (2020). On the relative (un)importance of foveal vision during letter search in naturalistic scenes. Vision Research, 177. doi:
- Nuthmann, A., Clayden, A. C., Fisher, R. B. (2021) The effect of target salience and size in visual search within naturalistic scenes under degraded vision. Journal of Vision, 21(2). doi:
- Willis, R., Clayden, A., & Polley, L. (2026). Community-based policing and emerging informal systems of justice: Battling against the dark side of Twitch. Internet Policy Review, 15(2).