Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method

Tom Boellstorff

Bonnie Nardi

Celia Pearce

T.L. Taylor

T.L. Taylor is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and Director of the MIT Game Lab. She is a qualitative sociologist who has focused on the interrelations between culture and technology in online environments for over thirty years. Her work sits at the intersection of sociology, critical internet and game studies, and science and technology studies.

Her book about game live streaming, Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming (Princeton University Press, 2018), was the first of its kind to chronicle the emerging media space of online game broadcasting and won the American Sociological Association’s CITAMS book award. She is also the author of Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (MIT Press, 2012) which explored the rise of esports and Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006), an ethnography of the massively multiplayer online game EverQuest. She is also co-author of, Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method (Princeton, 2012) which focuses on conducting ethnographic and qualitative research in online environments.

Dr. Taylor is a highly sought after speaker and consultant. Both the White House and the International Olympics Committee have invited her to special summits focused on gaming. Journalists for the New York Times, PBS, the Los Angeles Times, BBC, CBC, and many others often reach out to Dr. Taylor for her expertise and she also regularly serves as a consultant to industry and civic sector initiatives.

She currently serves as a member of Twitch’s Safety Advisory Council, co-founded the non-profit AnyKey, and sits on the editorial boards of Social Media & Society, Games and Culture, American Journal of Play, and ROMChip.

For more information about Dr. Taylor visit tltaylor.com.