09/09/2026
The Department of Psychology would like to congratulate Dr Bethany Thomas on completing her PhD!
Bethany’s thesis, “Investigating the construction, expression and salience of gamer identity for female single-player, narrative role-playing games gamers”, explored how gamer identity intersects with gender identity and established the theoretical basis from which gamer identity for women gamers may be best understood in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls).
Across three empirical studies following a mixed-methods research design, Bethany also examined the contextual influences on gamer identity expression in a less-explored gaming context, single-player narrative role-playing games, to extend the conceptual basis for understanding gamer identity construction for gamers.
As part of her open science practice; research materials, script, anonymised data and analysis outputs, is available via the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/4nbu9
Bethany was supervised by Prof Linda Kaye (Director of Studies) and Dr Andrew Levy (supervisor). Congratulations to all of you for this achievement. 👏🎓
