Tess Dunbar

Tess Dunbar

School of Humanities

Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics

I am a Visiting Research Fellow continuing the work of my PhD thesis, completed in 2023 in the Department of Historical and Classical Studies and Department of Media. My research is on gender and medievalism in video games and I work broadly in the fields of Historical Game Studies and Medieval History.

I am a Visiting Research Fellow, continuing my PhD research on gender and medievalism in video games and completing my monograph based on my thesis, forthcoming late 2025 with De Gruyter in the Video Games and the Humanities series. My PhD thesis investigated the representation of the gendered figure of the witch through three case study franchises (The Witcher, Dragon Age, and The Elder Scrolls, particularly Skyrim), focusing on the mobilisation of cultural historical imagination around gendered magic and witchcraft in the construction of fantasy medievalist worlds. I am interested in the 'gamification' of gender in historical games, and the vast potential of games, both digital and analogue (especially tabletop roleplay games), for the exploration and understanding of the sociocultural construction of gendered meanings. The power and prevalence of the witch archetype is underrepresented in video game scholarship, hence my interest in analysing witches in video games in historical context, in context with other strains of representation such as film, and in context with broader cultural movements around the idea of witchcraft both historically and in the present. This is interdisciplinary research that contributes most significantly to historical game studies and medievalism, but intersects with a range of other fields of study.

My Masters of Research thesis presented a historical analysis of the 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves video game, interpreting the differences between the game and film in the context of Gulf War America, largely regarding technology, gender, and race.

  • Journals
    Year Citation
    2024 Watterson, T. (2024). Militarism in medievalism: the Prince of Thieves video game and the Gulf War. Rethinking History, 28(3), 376-398.
    DOI
    2023 Watterson, T. (2023). ‘Now <i>you</i> are <i>Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves</i>™’: Intermedial Medievalism. Adaptation, 16(1), 50-62.
    DOI
    2022 Watterson, T. (2022). Medieval Stories and Storytelling: Multimedia and Multi-Temporal Perspectives. PARERGON, 39(1), 269-271.
    DOI
    2022 Watterson, T., & Roberts, Z. (2022). Seeing the unseen: <i>INVISIBILITY</i> at MOD.. History Australia, 19(3), 1-4.
    DOI

  • Book Chapters
    Year Citation
    2024 Watterson, T. (2024). Gender Subversion in Horror Fairy-Tale <i>Dimension 20: Neverafter</i>. In Gender and the Male Character in 21st Century Fairy Tale Narratives (pp. 139-153). Emerald Publishing Limited.
    DOI
    2022 Watterson, T. (2022). “Make him a woman:” Gender and witches in Darklands. In Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games (pp. 243-268). De Gruyter.
    DOI

  • Conference Papers
    Year Citation
    2021 di Carpegna Falconieri, T., Savy, P., & Yawn, L. (Eds.) (2021). Middle Ages without borders: a conversation on medievalism. In . Publications de l’École française de Rome.
    DOI
    2021 Watterson, T. (2021). "Everyone Knows Witches are Barren": Images of Fertility, Witchcraft and Womanhood in Medievalist Video Games. In R. Houghton (Ed.), The Middle Ages In Modern Games: Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2 (pp. 15). Twitter: The Public Medievalist; Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research, University of Winchester.

At the University of Adelaide:

  • Marker for HIST108: Empires in World History (2022)
  • Tutor for HIST3037: Early Modern Europe (2021), and HIST2053: Medieval Europe: Crusades to the Black Death (2021)
  • Guest Lecturer for MDIA2221: Digital Games, Cultures and Technologies (2020)

At University of Wollongong: 

  • Tutor for HIST111: The Modern World: Revolutions, Nations, Empires, 1750-1913 (2024) and HIST122: The Modern World: Wars, Inter-Wars, Global Movements, 1914-1945 (2024)

At Macquarie University:

  • Convenor and Tutor for MHIS2007: From Charlemagne to Game of Thrones: The Middle Ages Then and Now at Macquarie University - (2020)
  • Marker for MHIS3022: Culture and Power in Renaissance Europe (2024), MHIS/MHIX1001: Religion, Trade, and Empire in the Pre-Modern World, 1215-1788 (2020) and MHIS120: Making the Middle Ages: Faith, War and Romance (2019)

Other:

  • Invited Guest Lecture for ‘Historical Game Studies’ course through Nahrané dějiny at Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy (Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague), April 2024
Connect With Me
External Profiles