Edwards, Victoria

Start date:
October 2015
Research Topic:
Girls, boys and the cyber-social relations of digital gaming: new mediations of gender and sexuality in contemporary childhoods
Research pathway:
Research Supervisor:
Prof. Emma Renold, Dr Roser Beneito-Montagut
Supervising school:
School of Social Sciences,
Primary funding source:
ESRC Studentship

My research will explore how gender and sexualities might be produced and experienced in new and complex cyber-social gaming spaces. It is concerned with opening up new ways of researching gender and sexual digital cultures as materially real, socially regulated and discursively constructed. I aim to develop the methodology for this project collaboratively with participants. Emerging research questions include:

  • How do young people navigate the cyber-social relations of gaming cultures?
  • In what ways are gender and sexual cyber-social relations regulated and subverted in gaming cultures?
  • What theoretical tools and methodological practices enable researchers to explore the femininities, masculinities and sexualities of young people’s cyber-social relations in gaming cultures?