Bio
Austin Walker (University of Western Ontario) is a doctoral candidate studying the contemporary relationship between play and labour as the two intersect in work places, play spaces, and new markets. Specific research interests include EVE Online, Twitch.tv, the Steam marketplace, fan labour, and gamification. Walker additionally works with the Digital Labour Group’s on their SSHRC-funded project, “The Future of Organized Labour in the Digital Media Workplace.” There, he researches recent developments in the television industry in order to address how the emergence online content streaming, the web series, and “hope labour” practices have affected the wages and living conditions of creative labourers in Canada.