In recent months, I have begun to broaden my research interests and move toward less conventional pastures. This began shortly after I played the videogame Elden Ring’s expansion pack, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. The game is fantastic; it is an incredibly detailed and challenging action role-playing game set in an unforgiving world inhabited by demonic entities. The most striking aspect of the game to me, however, was its use of Irish folklore and culture. I wrote about this for RTE Brainstorm, Why is Irish mythology so prevalent in Japanese videogames?, a special wing of RTE established specifically for communicating academic research to the general public.

The publication of the RTE piece ties into my true favourite aspect of academic research: the dissemination of research. Research can often be a demoralizing task. Think for a moment: how often does Japanese fiction figure into your daily conversations? Because academic research is by its very nature specialized, it can often feel like pointless work. Explaining my doctoral research to friends and family often felt like a futile exercise. The research makes sense when you’re in the trenches, staying up to the wee hours, and combing through short stories for the perfect reference – but it isn’t always that interesting to anyone else.

Publication is never a single act either: this short RTE article led to a conference presentation, the material for which has inspired me to write a book chapter on videogames to be featured in an upcoming academic collection. One thing feeds into another, but it all began with me playing a videogame one muggy Saturday evening. Academic work often begins like this; leisure becomes inspiration becomes publication.

Dissemination and communication of your research is the most valuable part of academic life. There are many outlets similar to RTE Brainstorm, such as The Conversation, which cater specifically to making academic research interesting and approachable to any prospective reader. They encourage academics to convert their specialized research into plain language that does not require any pre-existing knowledge. These publications can directly lead to future opportunities too; friends of mine have appeared on the radio and podcasts as a result of publishing articles with RTE.

Academic research is not always presented in the clear language seen on RTE Brainstorm, however. Academic research is primarily disseminated through academic publishing (either via journal articles or book chapters) or by speaking at events like conferences or symposia. Conferences allow academics to workshop material and get feedback on their current projects, before they refine their research for publication in a journal. Alternatively, some academics present materials from recent publications at conferences in order to promote their research. I find conferences invaluable for editing and proofing my work: my general rule is that if I cannot explain my research to a room of interested peers, it’s probably not ready for publication.

So, what can research look like? My Elden Ring piece is a little basic; I just look at representations of Irish culture in videogames. There is no particular argument and direct arguments power the most interesting literary criticism. I am currently working on a prospective journal article that promises to be a little more ambitious. In my PhD, I wrote a lot about the academic distinctions between the terms ‘space’ and ‘place’, referring to the works of a Chinese thinker named Yi-Fu Tuan. In his most famous book, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Tuan defined space as a setting of potential and non-specificity. It is large and “marked off and defended against intruders” (7). So, a city square may be a space. Places, by comparison are specific and functional; “centres of felt value, where biological needs … are satisfied” (7). In this case, a specific fast-food stall in the city square might be a place. Space carries the potential of place within it: when you know or become accustomed to a space, it is soon composed of places.

I am currently applying these ideas to the imagined worlds of videogames. Tuan’s thinking can be applied to the experience of online gaming, specifically in the genre of the Battle Royale videogame. These are games like PUBG, Fortnite, or Call of Duty: Warzone. These games do not have a single storyline, but players construct their own stories and affinities to spaces (that then become places through experience). The research is something of a homecoming for me: during the Covid-19 pandemic, my brothers and I fell into playing PUBG on the daily. We developed a sort of vernacular that was subconsciously informed by space and place, devising our game plans around zones in each map that we knew best or were the most experienced in defending. The link between our gaming and Covid cannot be ignored either: for  the lockdown months, our journeys across the maps of PUBG were our primary form of travel. The experience and pleasure generated by playing this sort of videogame is unique to the genre; perhaps Tuan’s thinking can help to illuminate why and how gamers enjoy the battle royale genre.

My experience is, of course, just one example. All academics find their own inspiration in different places. My DCU colleague that I mentioned earlier will doubtless find inspiration from the upcoming Wicked Part II: sometimes the best academic work stems from moments of relaxation and leisure. These can form the basis of good, even boundary-pushing academic research.