Alana Whitson has always had a knack for solving logic problems. The anthropology major knew she wanted to complete an independent study project, but didn’t know where to start. What they did know, however, was who they wanted to work with.

After taking a gender and culture class with Dr. Katie Biittner, Whitson realized the associate professor of anthropology could be the perfect supervisor for her undefined project. Dr. Biittner’s suggestion to look at archaeogaming – the archaeological study of video games – with a focus on queerness, just made sense for Whitson.

“I felt like it was made for me – I love video games and I’m involved in queer activism,” Whitson explains. 

When she began looking at existing research and literature on the subject, Whitson, who is in the final year of their Bachelor of Arts degree, was left with a major question: why did studying those topics together matter?

“I realized about halfway through that I was adhering to a very heteronormative perspective that academia has put onto queer people. The fact that I needed to find an answer to this question in the first place is kind of antithetical to queerness in itself,” she says. “You can’t define why it matters academically, you have to listen to queer voices and find what they value in it.”

Once Whitson’s focus shifted away from the question of the importance of the studies in general and into the value of gaming within the queer community, she started to look at the feelings that video games evoke in queer players. “Games are a place of queer joy,” she says.

After changing their outlook, they began looking at the things queer players enjoy in games, but also the way video games can be "queered" both in terms of the  narrative and interaction of play and design. Whitson also found an interesting overlap in the larger fields of archaeology, queerness and video games.

“All three of those areas have an essence of experimentation. Play is a space where you can kind of do whatever, and there are no real consequences,” they say. “In the same way, present-day archaeology is about exploration and pushing the boundaries of what archaeology could be, and deconstructing its colonial past. Queerness, just by being opposite to what is heteronormative and cis-normative, pushes the boundaries of politics, social norms, sexuality, self-expression and love.”

After months of research, Whitson presented their study at the Queer Research Connections event on March 11. The presentation was personally meaningful, not only because she could showcase her hard work, but because of obstacles she overcame in order to accomplish it.

“I've had anxiety my whole life. One of the things that always kept me from doing research was anxiety, ADHD, and being neurodivergent. The idea of public speaking used to be my biggest fear,” she says. “I want people to see that there are no barriers inside of themselves that can keep them from doing their own research. I came this far, and you can do it too.”

Whitson will also be presenting her research at Student Research Day in April as she wraps up her degree. They hope to continue their love of research as part of a master’s program in anthropology in the fall.