My research deals with the functioning of broadly understood concepts of identity – from self-fashioning philosophies to posthumanist takes on the Anthropocene – in popular culture, and especially in video games, role-playing games and texts inspired by SF, fantasy and gothic conventions. While I usually focus on texts of culture and the dynamics between them, I am also interested in transmedial and communal dimensions of popular culture, including media-related fandoms and subcultures.

In Socialized Fiction: Role-Playing Games as a Multidimensional Space of Interaction between Literary Theory and Practice (Wydawnictwo Naukowe Grado, 2009) I analyzed role-playing games in terms of poststructuralist critical theories. My more recent book, A Goth Reflection: Self-Fashioning and Popular Culture (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2019) is devoted to the cultural dimension of identity projects as exemplified by narrative and aesthetic tropes connected with the goth subculture.

I have also published papers on contemporary fantasy and gothic literature, role-playing games, video games, transmedia narratives and fanfiction. My current research project approaches identity constructions in terms of biopolitics and posthumanism.

Research interests:

• Game studies
• Posthumanism and biopolitics
• Theories of self-fashioning
• Gothic studies
• Transmedia and fan studies
• Subcultural studies

Selected courses:

• Theoretical approaches to the protagonist in role-playing games
• Childhood and participatory culture
• How to do research on American speculative fiction? SF, fantasy and horror in literary and cultural studies

American life and institutions