I'm sociologist employed as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Innovation & Competition (CRIC) at the University of Manchester. My research and publication interests centre on social aspects of the use of Leisure Technologies especially issues of consumption, trust, and interaction within domestic spaces. These fall broadly into three empirical domains:

Computer gaming and the games industry
Gamers as consumers and producers; consumer innovation; gender and gaming; gaming and domestic routine; gaming communities (virtual, actual and imagined);gaming experience. (See also www.digiplay.info)

Consumption and Counterfeits
Physical and online counterfeiting, P2P piracy, trust; trust and e-branding; theoretical understandings of trust; consumer approaches to privacy.

Online communities and computer-mediated interaction
Organisation of "talk" online; construction of online identities; virtual relationships; gift economies; construction of virtual communities; "rules" of online interaction and communication; links between online interaction and face-to-face meetings; argument and conflict.

Current activities include a project for NESTA on iunnovation within the creative industries. Previously, I have worked with Jo Bryce (UCLAN) on the consumption of counterfeit goods which is funded by a trade and policy consortium led by the Northern Ireland Office, a textbook on digital games studies, Understanding Digital Games (Sage, 2006) and an edited collection on Digital Game Industries (Ashgate). I'm ran the ESRC-funded seminar series "DigiPlay: Experience and Consequence of Technologies of Leisure" and have chaired the conferences "Mobile Entertainment: User Centred Perspectives" and "Playing with the Future" and, for the European Commission, the Marie Curie conference "Putting the Knowledge Based Society in to Practice". Recent work has included editing special editions on digital gaming for "Game Studies" (2003) and "Information, Communication and Society" (2003) and participation in European research on mobile entertainment. I was vice-president of DiGRA between 2002 and 2005.

Ongoing research outside the area of ICTs includes work on humour, stand-up comedy and audiences which explores theories of humour, humour in conversation; laughter as affiliation and the rhetoric of joke telling. This builds upon my 1997 Ph.D., "Standup as Interaction: Performance and Audience in Comedy Venues" (Salford).

A list of my publications and conference presentations can be found on my pages as well as some of my papers.