Dungeons, dragons and COVID-19; a discussion of role play and identity amidst a global pandemic

Dungeons, dragons and COVID-19 is a project that discusses the intersection of role play and identity in online spaces during the global pandemic. It is situated ethnographically, at the intersection between the real world and the virtual mediated by technology. It attempts to bring to life the interior dialogues and imaginative worlds of people who found themselves detached from existing ways of being and allows us to contemplate the interaction between isolation and social presence in virtual realms, while recognising how communal storytelling can be a vital human strategy for sustaining a sense of agency in the face of disempowering circumstances.

I also presented this project and my conclusions at the fourth annual Leverhulme Interdisciplinary Network on Cybersecurity and Society (LINCS), which took place on 16th and 17th June 2021.