Ellis Bartholomeus studied at the Design Academy in Eindhoven at the department of People & Information. As a designer of communication and interaction she got engaged with motivation and engagement and became serious about games and play. In her Master Education in Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, she focused even more on researching autonomy in assessment, and how to share ownership in unbalanced (power) relations. As a PhD candidate, she is diving deeper in co-creation and participatory design with regard to people with dementia and AI.