Rob joined CMCI in July 2023. Prior to taking up his current post he had worked at Royal Holloway, the University of East Anglia, Concordia University, and Manchester Metropolitan University, where he held a position as a lecturer in Film and Media.

Rob’s research explores the expressive affordances of popular digital forms and genres, with a particular focus on videogames. He has spent much of his academic career working as part of multidisciplinary research teams. As a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia’s Technoculture, Art and Games lab he led a team conducting an SSHRC-funded study of videogame modding cultures. Between 2014 and 2019 he was  part of Ego-Media, an ERC-funded project focused on emerging forms of digital self-presentation, based at KCL. More recently he held a post as senior researcher on the AHRC-funded project Political Ideology, Rhetoric and Aesthetics in the Twenty-First Century: The Case of the 'Alt-Right'.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Digital games and gaming cultures
• Networked subcultures
• Theories of identity, embodiment and subjectivity
• Digital life-writing and auto/biography
• Online genres, aesthetics and affects

Rob’s research explores the expressive affordances of popular digital forms and genres, with a particular focus on videogames. Much of his recent work has concentrated on art games and autobiographical games, and on the positioning of indie, DIY and avant-garde game creators relative to the commercial games industry. Other research interests include the role of the voice in digital media, and the terms on which digital forms, genres, aesthetics and subcultures develop, with case studies ranging from grime music and ASMR videos to animated gifs and alt-right memes. Informed by media theory and game studies, Rob’s work is also heavily indebted to critical theories of identity, embodiment and subjectivity, from queer and trans theory to affect theory, posthumanist philosophy and critical theories of ‘race’. He welcomes proposals for PhD projects in any of these areas.

Selected publications

• Gallagher, R. and Topinka, R. (2023). ‘The Politics of the NPC Meme: Reactionary Subcultural Practice and Vernacular Theory.’ Big Data & Society 10(1)
• Gallagher, R. (2022). ‘Humanising Gaming? The Politics of Posthuman Agency in Autobiographical Videogames.’ Convergence 28(2): 359-373.
• Gallagher, R. (2017). Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity (Routledge, 2017)
• Gallagher, R. (2016). ‘Eliciting Euphoria Online: The Aesthetics of “ASMR” Video Culture.’ Film Criticism 40(2)

Teaching

Rob teaches across a range of media and gaming modules within CMCI. He is particularly interested in pedagogical approaches that combine creative practice with critical analysis, and in online pedagogy. He received his postgraduate teaching certificate in 2020, becoming a fellow of the Higher Education Association.

Expertise and public engagement

Rob has written on games and gaming culture for publications such as The Guardian, The New Inquiry and The Architectural Review, has appeared on the Critical Technology and Keywords in Play podcasts, and has been interviewed about his research by journalists from Radio Deutschland, Reuters and the New York Times, among others. In 2015 he worked with YouTubers to create a podcast about ASMR for Resonance FM. In 2021 he collaborated with Dr. Robert Topinka and Professor Alan Finlayson on Reactionary Digital Politics, an eight-part podcast featuring interviews with leading researchers working on digital subcultures, conspiracy theories, contemporary right-wing movements, and the impact of digital platforms on political communication. He has also undertaken research-creation projects with artists such as Janina Lange and Marija Bozinovska-Jones, collaborating with the former on a pop-up motion capture studio and the latter on an immersive audio installation shown at Furtherfield and featured on the Serpentine gallery’s podcast.

Selected publications

• Gallagher, R. (2024). ‘The Uses of Ludobiography: How to Read Life-Writing about Videogames’. In Sell, M. & Condis, M. A. (eds.), Ready Reader One: The Stories We Tell With, About, and Around Videogames (Louisiana State University Press)
• Gallagher, R. and Topinka, R. (2023). ‘The Politics of the NPC Meme: Reactionary Subcultural Practice and Vernacular Theory.’ Big Data & Society 10(1)
• Gallagher, R. (2022). ‘Humanising Gaming? The Politics of Posthuman Agency in Autobiographical Videogames.’ Convergence 28(2): 359-373.
• Gallagher, R. (2017). Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity (Routledge)
• Gallagher, R. (2016). ‘Eliciting Euphoria Online: The Aesthetics of “ASMR” Video Culture.’ Film Criticism 40(2)