RESEARCH

I study video gaming, labor, and youth in Nairobi, focusing on how young people navigate economic uncertainty through play, technology, and creative work. My research combines ethnographic fieldwork in gaming cafés, studios, and tournaments with collaborations in industry.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Dissertation [In Progress]
Gaming Futures: Play, Work, and Youth Aspiration in Urban Kenya is an ethnographic study of Nairobi’s gaming ecosystem, exploring how young people use play and digital work to pursue economic and social mobility. Drawing on fieldwork across gaming cafés, studios, and esports events, it examines the material conditions that shape these practices and the value they generate.

Playable Media [In Progress]
Kîkuu nîkyatûkîe [The Calabash is Broken] is a slow-play, culturally embedded digital experience that draws from the everyday textures of Kamba life passed through women’s hands, rooted in ethnographic research and intimate family memory. Through interactive tasks such as making ghee and pounding maize, players engage in memory, ritual, and inheritance through play.

SELECTED OUTPUTS

Academic Conferences

“Reading the Small/Minor Video Game”
Playing Africa: Imagining African Lives Panel.
African Studies Association Annual Meeting (ASA), December 2023, San Francisco, CA.

“Urban Playgrounds: Nairobi’s Video Game Cafés.”
New Youth Spaces: Reconfiguring African’s Urban Futures Panel.
African Studies Association Annual Meeting (ASA), December 2023, San Francisco, CA.

Talks & Presentations

Presentation: Leaning into the Friction | Africa Games Week | December 2025

Panelist: Games for Change Africa Summit | April 2026