Having initially trained as a composer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Alexander received a BAFTA New Talent nomination for the short film ‘Room 9’ in 2011 and graduated from the BMus (Hons) Composition programme in 2013. At the Glasgow School of Art, he graduated from the MDes Sound for the Moving Image programme in 2015 and the MSc Serious Games and Virtual Reality programme in 2016, and successfully defended his PhD in Game Development in 2022.
Alexander’s latest book chapter, Accessibility by Numbers: A Critical Review of Game Accessibility Guidelines, explores accessible game design and is published in Disability and Video Games under Palgrave Macmillan. His PhD work is set to be published as a standalone book in 2025.
ISM Music Journal, Spring 2025
Video Games and the Concert Hall
Preserve Harmony, Autumn 2024
The Current State of Video Game Audio
Disability and Video Games, 2023
Accessibility by Numbers: A Critical Review of Game Accessibility Guidelines
(2023) Book Chapter. In Spöhrer, M. and Ochsner, B. (eds.) Disability and Video Games. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Research Projects
PhD Game Development: Glasgow School of Art
Thesis: SoundTown: Building Accessible Music-Making Experiences using Videogame Technologies
Doctoral research in game development, specifically in accessible UX design for music games. Projects included developing music-game experiences for young children with complex physical and cognitive disabilities using Unity, Wwise, and the new Xbox Adaptive Controller, and carrying out critical reviews on existing game accessibility guideline documents.
MSc Serious Games and Virtual Reality: Glasgow School of Art
Thesis: Developing Serious Games for Accessible Music Making
Game programming and design course with a focus on VR and games for education, simulation, and training. Included 3D engine development (C# Monogame), Unity development, FMOD, Wwise, interactive visualisation, simulation, haptics, MOCAP, HMDs, LeapMotion, PhantomOmni, 3D mice, and Kinect.
MDes Sound for the Moving Image: Glasgow School of Art
Thesis: Non-Diegetic Music in First Person Virtual Environments
Technical audio programme taught to BBC broadcast engineering standards. Included sound design for linear and non-linear media, dubbing mixing in stereo and 5.1 surround, FMOD, Wwise, recording, decoding, and mixing in 16-channel ambisonics, foley recording, dialogue editing, ADR, and VO recording.
BMus (Hons) Composition: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
Major Work: Toi Toi Toi (60-minute opera)
Classical training in concert hall composition under the tutelage of Head of Composition, Dr Gordon McPherson. Included writing over twenty works for a variety of instrumental forces. Training included composition and orchestration, electroacoustic composition in Pro Tools, and patch development in MaxMSP.