Dr Marco Benoit Carbone
Senior Lecturer Intercultural Studies – Games Design

Summary

Dr Marco B. Carbone is a Senior Lecturer in Intercultural Studies and the Research Lead for the Digital Arts Division. He researches identity, play, and heritage in relation to traditional and digital games media and visual, material, and performance cultures.

Marco's interdisciplinary research background encompasses ethnographic research, the sociology of culture, and media and cultural studies. He is particularly interested in the anthropology of play, cultural geography, and expressions of nationhood, regionalism, and ethnicity in the creative, heritage, and tourism industries. 

He is also interested in interdisciplinary, collaborative research methodologies and in the applied use of media production and games design (including serious and educational games) for research, outreach, and cultural and social interventions.

Marco is a Member of research groups from diverse areas, including MECCSA, EASA, and SIAC. He has held positions teaching cultural and media studies and social sciences at UCL, the University of the Arts LCC and CSM, and LSBU. His background includes a BA and MAs in Communication Sciences (University of Bologna) and Publishing (SSSSUB/Centro Studi Umberto Eco) and a PhD in Intercultural Studies from UCL. Marco's doctoral research focused on the contemporary reception of antiquity and the impact of popular media on heritage and tourism policies in South Italy. During that time his interest shifted increasingly towards fieldwork methods and heritage studies. He was also involved in a Higher Education research project on attainment gaps among underprivileged students in the UK.

Marco has researched identity in areas that include ethnicity and gender, nationhood and heritage, and youth cultures. He works in the field of digital games studies as a Founding Editor of GAME Journal, as a Member of research groups on gaming and play, and as an evaluator for research councils.

His latest work includes a co-edited collection on the national video games industry in Italy and his monograph Geographies of Myth and Places of Identities (Bloomsbury 2022) on identity, heritage, and tourism. Marco is conducting fieldwork in Italy and England on play, festivals, and regional communities,, including working with Brunel's Institute of Communities and Society on British-Italian relations. He is currently curating a Special Issue on the representations of Italy's South for JICMS – Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, for which he serves as a Member of the Editorial Board. 

Qualifications

• PhD Intercultural Studies (University College London)
• Fellow – Higher Education Academy (AdvanceHE) 
• MA Publishing (University of Bologna Alma Mater Studiorum / SSSUB)
• BA & MA Communication & Media Sciences – (University of Bologna Alma Mater Studiorum)

Responsibility

• Research Lead for Digital Arts, CBASS.
• Convenor – AGGR 'Applied Games and Gaming Research' group.
• Convenor – Techne Scholarships, Digital Arts