Xiaobin Zhou is a full-time PhD student (started in July 2021), supervised by Dr Adrian Leguina and Dr Paula Saukko.
He graduated from University of Science and Technology Beijing in 2017 with a BA degree in Japanese. From 2017 to 2018 he worked as a Mandarin teacher at The Confucius Institute at De Montfort University. In 2020, Xiaobin completed the MA in Global Media and Cultural Industries at º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ.
In the MA dissertation, Xiaobin conducted a qualitative study on the creative production in indie (video) game industry, which involved interviews with global indie game creators.
Xiaobin is currently interested in Bourdieu, social class, inequalities, videogame-related practices, and video game production. His PhD research focuses on the tension between players’ social positions and their practices in the game-related fields, which will involve a mixed methods approach.