Working for Fun

What happens when play becomes work?

At the intersection of sport, technology, and entertainment, esports has created a market for professional gamers— those who make a living playing video games. Esports is a rapidly growing billion-dollar industry capturing a broad global audience. Technology has been essential to its growth. But professional gaming is more than a job; it is an immersive lifestyle that demands arduous work and personal sacrifices in exchange for fun. Despite these conditions, some gamers are willing to take a chance on living out their dream.

My dissertation takes an in-depth look at the lives and careers of professional competitive video gamers. This qualitative inductive study is based on 70 interviews with esports professionals, along with digital ethnographic practices that include in-person and online observations of the gaming community.

Pro gamers, like many of us, are learning to navigate the changing nature of work. We want to find work we love doing, but at the same time our jobs are increasingly uncertain and dependent on rapidly changing technology. As organizations blur the boundary between our work lives and personal lives, it is becoming harder to untangle the meaning and value of our time, effort, skills, and selves.

Experts without Expertise: Professional Identity During the AIDS Epidemic

We build our professional identities around our "what we do"— the specific knowledge and skills that help us solve complex problems. But how do you define your professional identity when your expertise is suddenly useless?

The HIV/AIDS epidemic challenged deeply held assumptions about medicine and society. AIDS not only affected highly stigmatized and marginalized populations, it was practically untreatable for over fifteen years. Nevertheless, a small group of physicians, later known as AIDS Doctors, saw it as their moral duty to care for these patients. They soon found themselves at a loss for how to treat and cure patients, leading AIDS Doctors to question the "meaning of medicine"— the foundations of their professional identity.

Drawing on in-depth oral histories of 80 physicians, my co-authors and I explore how AIDS Doctors reconstructed their professional identity in the absence of expertise. Little did we know when we started this project that these questions would become painfully relevant as the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the world.

Digital Data, Digital Contexts

As qualitative field researchers, we are taught to "enter" a field, observe experiences first-hand, and/or talk to people directly. But qualitative methods can no longer be premised exclusively on face-to-face interactions or observation in physical spaces. Today, digital and physical activities are not singular acts or moments; they are seamlessly embedded into our everyday life. Interactions are not only mediated by technology, they are structured by the tools themselves.

Studying digital data and digital contexts forces us to re-examine fundamental assumptions and practices about our research methods. Yet I’ve witnessed many of my colleagues struggle to collect and analyze digital data, or to document and write about their process. Specifically I explore themes around the temporal and spatial boundaries of dynamic co-constitutive digital and physical spaces; the possibilities and limits of interactivity with people and/or (automatically generated) data; the circumstances around production and consumption of digital data; and ethical concerns including accessibility and privacy.