GenGam: Gendered Gam(bl)ing

Project description

European governments are increasingly concerned with safer gaming and gambling online. The GenGam project (2026-2030) will create new knowledge about women’s gamblified leisure through the consumption of East Asian pop culture. The project is situated across game studies, media-, and cultural studies, East Asia studies, and borrows knowledge from women- and gender studies, and gambling studies. GenGam uses qualitative data, relying on case studies, international fieldwork in Japan and Hong Kong, and auxiliary textual sources. It will use close critical readings as the method for data analysis. The research will be carried out at Tampere University. GenGam’s result addresses the current scientific and governmental biases on stereotypical videogaming and masculine gambling by including a focus on women’s gamblified leisure. The results will impact the early-stage policy-making processes that are specifically geared towards online safety in videogaming and gambling on a European level.

GenGam is set to run from September 1st, 2026 until August 31st, 2030. This webpage will be updated with publications, activities, and more over the course of the project.

Social media

GenGam occassionally publishes updates via a newsletter on Rumicat. You can subscribe to the newsletter here: https://www.rumicat.com/gengam

Any questions regarding the project can be directed to the principal investigator, Joleen Blom, by sending me an email to johanna [dot] blom [at] tuni [dot] fi.

Funding

GenGam is funded by the Research Council of Finland, 2026 Academy Research Fellowship (decision number: 375320). Link to decision: https://research.fi/en/results/funding/89168