Queer/crip gaming? Exploring the embodied encounters and social worlds of queer/disabled-gaming youth (Advert Ref: RDF18/SSL/COLEMAN-FOUNTAIN)

Aims
Despite its ubiquity (in terms of participation rates or economic value), video gaming is not a major area of study in sociology. This may be a result of the view that gaming is a solitary leisure activity – an interaction between fleshy user and machine. As a social practice that provides a key focus of young people’s social interaction and storytelling, gaming does however offer an opportunity for sociological thinking. This PhD aims to draw the gaming practices of queer and/or disabled youth into the study of young people’s social worlds, community spaces, and embodied interactions. By bringing gaming into focus, the research aims to explore the broader social significance of gaming for the relational worlds of queer youth.

Background
Computer games are increasingly taken seriously. Research into the relationship between casual gaming and mental health, for example, has highlighted the significant impact that gaming can have on mood (Fleming et al., 2017). Immersive narratives (Lu et al, 2012), involving game-play (Iacovides et al., 2015), and the capacity for learning and meaning making contribute to the current view that gaming is a ‘serious experience’ (Iacovides and Cox, 2015). Within the growing literature on video games, gaming, and video-game culture however, sociological approaches remain underdeveloped, with analyses of video gaming typically drawn from other disciplines (Crawford, 2012).

Recent texts, like Crawford’s (2012) Video Gamers, establish the basis for a sociological study of video games by showing that gaming culture is ‘ordinary’. It is this everyday-ness and the grounding in the material – gaming as something people share in and make time for – that is sociologically interesting. One key area is the way video games and gaming mediate social relationships, for instance through the development of social bonds and as a focus of identity and community (Taylor, 2009; Keogh, 2013). Related to this, arguments about representation, more urgent since the 2014 ‘gamergate’ controversy (a backlash against progressivism in gaming), highlight how gaming intersects with the (de)valuing of different gendered, sexual, racialized and dis/abled bodies (Shaw, 2015; Malkowski and Russworm, 2017)

The PhD will enter these debates through an exploration of the relationship between gaming as an ‘ordinary’ social practice and the embodied, relational worlds of queer and/or disabled young people. The focus on queer and/or disabled youths will build on the expertise of the supervisor in researching young people’s identities, cultures and social practices (Coleman-Fountain, 2014a, 2014b, 2017a, 2017b; McLaughlin and Coleman-Fountain, 2014, forthcoming)

Methodology
The PhD project will combine in-depth interviews and participant observation which will include the use of ‘walking’ methods wherein participants ‘walk’ the researcher through some aspect of their gaming practice. The aim is to produce data that is textual, ethnographic, and visual, with a focus on exploring the gaming practices and relational worlds of queer and/or disabled young people. A key focus of these methods will be exploring how gaming practice connects to identity narratives and social formations associated with difference, queerness and disability. The analysis will develop approaches established in the supervisor’s previous research, which explores the uses of the textual and visual in understanding the social (Coleman-Fountain, 2014b; McLaughlin and Coleman-Fountain, 2014, forthcoming)

Eligibility and How to Apply
Please note eligibility requirement:
• Academic excellence of the proposed student i.e. 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities [preference for 1st class honours]); or a Masters (preference for Merit or above); or APEL evidence of substantial practitioner achievement.
• Appropriate IELTS score, if required.
• Applicants cannot apply for this funding if currently engaged in Doctoral study at Northumbria or elsewhere.

For further details of how to apply, entry requirements and the application form, see
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/how-to-apply/

Please note: Applications that do not include a research proposal of approximately 1,000 words (not a copy of the advert), or that do not include the advert reference (e.g. RDF18/…) will not be considered.

Deadline for applications: 28 January 2018
Start Date: 1 October 2018

Northumbria University takes pride in, and values, the quality and diversity of our staff. We welcome applications from all members of the community. The University holds an Athena SWAN Bronze award in recognition of our commitment to improving employment practices for the advancement of gender equality and is a member of the Euraxess network, which delivers information and support to professional researchers