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 Loughborough University.
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.