PhD Candidate for project on Football video games and race

We are looking for a PhD candidate who wishes to conduct PhD research in the project “Everyday racism: How do football video game cultures respond?”

Deadline: 8 Oct ’25

Published on: 6 Sep ’25

Vacancy ID: 5202

The Erasmus School of History, Culture, and Communication (ESHCC) at Erasmus University Rotterdam is excited to offer a challenging and innovative PhD position on meanings given to race in football video game cultures. The project is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

The PhD project will focus on the popular practice of football video gaming that engages many millions of young people worldwide. The popularity of football video gaming applies especially to the ‘EA FC’ game, formerly known as the ‘FIFA game’. Its popularity positions the game as an informal learning site for ideas about societal issues. This includes ideas about race and ethnicity, given the racial/ethnic diversity of the digital players in the game. EA FC assigns meanings to the racially diverse (digital) players but in a different way from mainstream sports media, which requires new research.

Such research should not only attend to the actual content of the game but also to its development/production, and to how streamers, as influential figures in gaming culture, shape their community’s perceptions and attitudes of in-game footballers. The question of relevance in this project is what messages about race and ethnicity are conveyed to those engaged in football video gaming and how these messages are developed by game developers and shaped by players who stream the EA FC game content.

To further boost its impact, the project will also explore football video gaming as a site of change. Specifically, we aim to cooperate with the industry to further foster football video gaming's inclusionary potential, using a practical intervention which we call ‘equity conversation'.

Data collection in the project will combine content analysis (of game content), interviews, and participant observations (with/amongst game professionals), amongst other things.

The candidate will be appointed for a period of four years. The main location will be Rotterdam but an important part of the data collection should also take place in Vancouver and Bucharest.

Job description: The successful candidate will be based at the Department of Media and Communication of the ESHCC and will carry out the following tasks:

• Research (0.85 fte): Conducting PhD research. Engaging and cooperating with the main stakeholders within the domain of football video gaming. Publishing and presenting research results in the form of articles in international peer reviewed journals and papers at international conferences. Disseminating research findings to a wider audience (e.g. via a MOOC, a podcast, presentations at schools). Writing a dissertation within the appointment duration of four years. Taking part in seminars, workshops etc. that are organized by the Erasmus Research Institute for Media, Culture, History and Society (ERMeCHS), the Department of Media and Communication, and ERMeCHS’s established research clusters such as Popular Culture and Inequality (PCI) and Virtual Environments, Games and Society (VEGAS).
• Teaching (0.15 fte): Performing junior teaching tasks in the BA or MA degree programmes in the field of Media and Communication provided by ESHCC, primarily through tutorial group teaching.

Requirements: To be eligible, a candidate must have: A Master’s degree in the Social Sciences or Humanities, preferably a research master; Wide-ranging knowledge of and affinity with game studies, media studies, sociology of sport, cultural studies and race/ethnicity studies; Proven familiarity with and keen interest in social science research methods (mainly qualitative but preferably also quantitative or mixed-methods); Independent thinking and critical analytical skills; Good collaboration and interpersonal skills (connecting and working with game professionals as well as streaming collectives is an important part of the research); Excellent oral and written communication skills, especially in English (CEFR C1); The ability and commitment to carry out high level research and publish in renowned peer reviewed international journals.

Conditions of employment: We offer you an internationally oriented and varied job in an enthusiastic team, with excellent working conditions in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU). The start date of this position is between 1 December 2025 and 1 January 2026 and you will be based at campus Woudestein in the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC). This position is for 1 FTE. The salary is dependent on your experience and knowledge and ranges from a minimum of € 3.059 to a maximum of € 3.881 gross per month (scale PhD) on a fulltime basis (38 hours), in accordance with the CAO-NU. The duration of the initial contract is 18 months and will be extended with another 30 months upon good evaluation and unchanged organizational circumstances.