Spokes, Matthew

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Biography
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Contact

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Name:

Spokes, Matthew

Email:

m.spokes@yorksj.ac.uk

Department:

School of Humanities

Address:

TWM09

Biography

Expertise:

Video games, Death studies, Spatial theory

Job title:

Associate Dean: Social Sciences

Biography:

Matt’s research mainly focuses on popular culture, spatial theory and death. His recent work includes a book on video games and the sublime, as well as papers on the spatiality of the Wild West in video games; pro social behaviour and simulated violence; procedural rhetoric during the War on Terror and new methodological approaches to qualitative interviewing. Matt is current working on papers on grief and screen death and liminality/metaxis in cases of interstitial death.

Qualifications:

PhD in Sociology: The Contemporary Avant-garde: Classification, Organization, Spatiality and Practices of Resistance. University of York (2015) MA in Conflict, Governance and Development, University of York (2007) BA Hons in Politics and Sociology of Contemporary Culture, University of East Anglia (2005)

My Latest

Labayru, Begona Medina Paz, Moisieiev, Dmytro ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8643-7435 and Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2025) Will Brands With Dynamic Logos Appear More Exciting And Authentic In The Metaverse? In: 57 Academy of Marketing Conference, 7-10 July 2025, Cork, Ireland.
Veal, Caitlin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5394-2881, Coward-Gibbs, Matt ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5982-7630, Denham, Jack ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-8292 and Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2024) ‘You feel like you've found a place where you belong’: Symbolic Interactionism and Online Social Video Games in the Age of COVID-19. Games and Culture.
Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879, Denham, Jack ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-8292, Coward-Gibbs, Matt ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5982-7630 and Veal, Caitlin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5394-2881 (2024) ‘I wasn’t me, grieving in my room. I was Spiderman’: Gaming, Loss and Self-Care following COVID-19. Mortality, 30 (1). pp. 157-172.
Denham, Jack ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-8292, Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879, Coward-Gibbs, Matt ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5982-7630 and Veal, Caitlin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5394-2881 (2023) Personal, Pedagogic Play: A Dialogic Model for Video Game Learning. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 33 (3). pp. 805-822.
Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2023) ‘Death. Carnage. Chaos’: mortality and mountaineering on-screen, and on the roof of the world. In: Coleclough, Sharon, Michael-Fox, Bethan and Visser, Renske, (eds.) Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture. London, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 69-83
Denham, Jack ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-8292 and Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2023) Il diritto alla città virtuale: la regressione rurale nei videogiochi open world. In: Bittanti, Matteo, (ed.) Reset. Politica e videogiochi. Eterotopie (837). Mimesis, pp. 259-291
Denham, Jack ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-8292 and Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2022) Little Data: Negotiating the ‘New Normal’ with Idiosyncratic and Incomplete Datasets. International journal of Social Research Methodology, 26 (6). pp. 679-691.
Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2020) Chapter 7. Fear. In: Gaming and the Virtual Sublime: Rhetoric, Awe, Fear, and Death in Contemporary Video Games. Emerald, pp. 103-124
Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2020) Gaming and the Virtual Sublime: Rhetoric, Awe, Fear, and Death in Contemporary Video Games. Bingley, Emerald
Denham, Jack ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-8292 and Spokes, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6456-3879 (2021) The Right to the Virtual City: Rural Retreatism in Open-World Video. New Media and Society, 23 (6). pp. 1567-1583.

My Most Viewed

#	Item title
1	Developing Interactive Elicitation: Social Desirability Bias and Capturing Play	807	411
2	Gaming and the Virtual Sublime: Rhetoric, Awe, Fear, and Death in Contemporary Video Games	279	493
3	Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces	226
4	Class and narrative accrual: personal troubles and public issues in five vignettes.	214	198
5	“War…war never changes”: exploring explicit and implicit encounters with death in a post-apocalyptic gameworld	206	274
6	The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, procedural rhetoric and the military-entertainment complex: two case studies from the War on Terror.	202	322
7	Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces	199
8	‘I wasn’t me, grieving in my room. I was Spiderman’: Gaming, Loss and Self-Care following COVID-19	156	56
9	Chapter 7. Fear	149	174
10	‘Death. Carnage. Chaos’: mortality and mountaineering on-screen, and on the roof of the world	145	5