Annika Waern

Annika Waern is a Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Uppsala University’s Department of Informatics and Media. She describes herself as a research-through-design academic with a background in computer science and HCI. Her work covers the design and use of mobile technology, physical and pervasive games, game design, embodied interaction, and play design. She has been employed at Uppsala University since April 2013; before that boundary, her academic home page identifies her as a professor at Stockholm University and research leader at the Mobile Life excellence centre. An official Uppsala notice confirms that she was acting Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences in February 2025; the university’s current organisation page now lists Kristine Höglund as Dean, so Waern’s leadership assignment is historical rather than current. Uppsala University profile Personal academic home Official February 2025 notice Current faculty organisation

• 2025 (historical assignment; exact end date not located)·Uppsala University, Faculty of Social Sciences·Acting Dean
  • An official February 2025 notice confirms her acting-dean role. The current organisation page lists Kristine Höglund as Dean, so Waern is not presented as current faculty leadership. Official February notice Current organisation page
• April 2013–Present·Uppsala University, Department of Informatics and Media·Professor in Human-Computer Interaction
  • The official staff profile confirms the April 2013 employment start and lists her research description and public publications. Staff profile
• Before April 2013·Stockholm University; Mobile Life excellence centre·Professor; research leader
  • Her academic home page supplies this historical boundary but not exact earlier start/end years, so no narrower dates are inferred. About

• 1996·KTH Royal Institute of Technology·Doctoral dissertation: Recognising Human Plans: Issues for Plan Recognition in Human-Computer Interaction
  • An institutional history source lists the work as a KTH dissertation; DBLP records the same work and its Royal Institute of Technology publication details. DSV 40 years history DBLP

• Designing for Transformative Play (2017): a model for relationships between play activity and design.
• Hybrid Museum Experiences: Theory and Design (2022): co-edited work on hybrid museum experiences.
• Digital Play in Nature: A Study of Digital Play Installations from a Nature Play Perspective (CHI 2025): research on digital-physical play installations in nature settings.
• Her Uppsala University publication list provides the broader institutional record, including work on mobile technology, physical training, museum experiences, and game/play design.

• 2016 | DiGRA Distinguished Scholar. DiGRA’s official directory confirms the induction and records her coordination of the EU-funded IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Games) project during 2004–2008. DiGRA Distinguished Scholars

Last reviewed: 2026-09-23. Primary sources were the Uppsala University English and Swedish staff pages, the current Uppsala Faculty of Social Sciences organisation pages and the accessible February 2025 leadership notice, Waern’s self-authored academic home page, DiGRA’s official Distinguished Scholars directory, and the DSV institutional history and DBLP bibliographic record. The baseline Google Scholar URL was rate-limited (429) and was not directly attributed by an official page, so it is omitted; a candidate LinkedIn page was robots-blocked and is likewise omitted. The ORCID landing page rendered only a JavaScript shell, but the identifier is mapped to Waern by the Uppsala DiVA authority record and is retained with that limitation.