Amanda Cote

Amanda Cote is an Associate Professor and Director of the Serious Games Certificate in the Department of Media & Information. She researches the industry and culture of games, with an emphasis on areas such as gender, identity, and representation; game development and labor; and collegiate esports. In recent publications, for instance, she has explored how crunch (extensive, often unpaid overtime) persists in the video game industry, how collegiate esports programs responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how race and gender stereotypes permeate game-related media and communities. She addresses these questions through methods such as in-depth interviews and discourse analysis.

Cote completed her Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Michigan in 2016, then worked at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. She is the author of Gaming Sexism: Gender and Identity in the Era of Casual Video Games (New York University Press, 2020) and coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Esports (Routledge, 2024). She has also published articles in venues including Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Convergence, Games and Culture, and Feminist Media Studies.