Current Research

I’m an academic who primarily engages with socio-phenomenologically informed research on networked high-performance teamplay, esports & LANs.

My current research projects include:

• Professionalisation of esports in Australia (with Essendon Football club)
• Networked Sportspersonship (with Dr. Alessandro Canossa of Northeastern University, USA)
• High-performance play, live-streaming, public events and gender (with TL Taylor, MIT & Nicholas Taylor, NCSU)
• Esports careers

 

Participant Information for “Esports in secondary school education 2018”

BACKGROUND: Currently, little research has been conducted on esports in Australia, a region of rapid institutional expansion across commercial and public networked competitive gaming scenes. Most available studies are market/industry reports which promote predominantly generalised, quantitative data insights on the visible industry at large.

This study explores how parents, teachers and educational faculty members experience and understand esports in the secondary school setting. The study aims to provide specificity around this sector of esports within educational institutions, and hear from those involved on the everyday experiences and concerns surrounding its current state and practices. Please read the University approved research ethics form for this study.

If you are a parent or teacher currently involved with esports in the school setting, it would be great to hear about your/family engagement. Please catch me on email. All interviews which I conduct are confidential (participants are pseudonymed/can choose their pseudonym).

Participant Information for “Esports & Mega-LANs”

I am currently doing fieldwork at Mega-LANs such as major LANs Dreamhack (Jönköping, Sweden) and smaller LAN events including CouchWarriors/BAM8 & PAX AU  (Melbourne, Australia).

During these events, I’ll be doing interviews with players/teams/administrators, with an eye on:

• Mid-tier player experiences of sportspersonship during play
• Non-textual experiences of play/performance
• ‘Teamness’, networked communities and recruitment
• Play/non-expert play with tactics/strategies
• Regular participation patterns
• Career esports players/coaches/shoutcasters
• Event management & volunteerism at LANs

If you are a mid-tier player who can speak to their experiences around team-play and participation with a tournament team, or event manager/volunteer, it would be great to hear about your engagements. Please catch me on email. All interviews which I conduct are confidential (everyone is pseudonymed/can choose their pseudonym).

We can talk face to face if you are a participant at Dreamhack Summer, live in Australia (Melbourne), or otherwise we can arrange an interview over Skype or email.

Thanks for taking an interest in the research.