| Project Supervisor | Astrid Van den Bossche |
| Institution & Department | King’s College London – Department of Digital Humanities |
| Research Area | RA3: Language, Culture and Education |
| Project Start Date | Sept 2026 onwards – flexible start date offered. |
| Project Duration | 3 months |
| Application Deadline | 4th June 2026 |
| Working Pattern | Either full-time or part-time. Please discuss and agree on Working Patterns with the Project Supervisor. |
| Working Arrangements | Hybrid |
| Meetings can be held in person or online, depending on the student’s preference and the supervisor’s schedule. There should be an in-person meeting at least every three weeks, or more frequently. | |
| How to Apply | View Guidance Here |
Project Description
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Gaming platform Roblox’s virtual economy extends beyond the platform itself into ‘shadow markets’, most notably across an array of Discord servers that function as informal marketplaces, information exchanges, and community hubs. Whereas Roblox itself is (increasingly) heavily moderated, Discord offers largely self-governed spaces where players can negotiate prices, broker deals, share information, or discuss exploits. As a result, these servers are likely significant sites of economic socialisation for younger players, but they are an understudied layer of Roblox’s informal digital economy.
In this project, we will map the connections between Roblox and Discord (including, for example, social media posts that make reference to both) and are therefore likely entry points for Roblox players into these spaces. We will then investigate the cultures and practices of these Discord communities and the shadow markets they sustain. The project will contribute to a growing body of research on children’s digital economic participation, platform governance, and the ways in which commercial enculturation operates across interconnected platform ecosystems, rather than within single platforms.
Methodologically, this project also presents an opportunity to advance our understanding of Discord as a research site, especially in the context of childhood and youth studies, where Discord servers become de facto playgrounds. Discord’s unique affordances (including ephemeral and persistent channels, bot-mediated interactions, role-based access, and nested server structures) pose distinct ethical and methodological challenges for both computational and ethnographic approaches. The project will aim to develop an ethics framework appropriate to studying semi-public youth spaces.
Internship Details
This project has a degree of flexibility in terms of methods, but if you would like to undertake a computational analysis, you should have some basic programming knowledge already (preferably python). Either way, you will have an opportunity to learn about computational approaches from the social media mapping.
Given that we may interact with minors on the platform, and as part of the project’s ethics protocol, we will make sure that you have had an enhanced DBS check.
The student will:
• Conduct a literature review on Discord as a research site, producing an annotated bibliography suited for the wider project.
• Contribute to the cross-platform social media mapping work, helping to identify and document the pathways (TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, server directories, etc.) through which Roblox players are routed into shadow markets on Discord.
• Choose a methodological focus — either computational (e.g. data collection via the Discord API, network analysis, computational text analysis) or ethnographic (e.g. participant observation of specific Discord servers) — and develop their contribution in greater depth in that area.
• Support the development of an ethics framework appropriate to studying semi-public youth spaces on Discord and translating it into protocol decisions for this project.
• Participate in regular team meetings, contribute to ongoing analytic discussions, and present their work to the team at the end of the internship.
Intended outputs:
• A draft contribution to a methodology paper on studying youth cultures on Discord, focusing on a discrete component aligned with the student’s chosen methodological focus.
• A report outlining the findings of the social media mapping and/or the Discord-based fieldwork. This report may be shared with stakeholder organisations.
• A co-authored piece of writing translating the report for wider dissemination, such as a research blog post.
The student will also have the opportunity to remain on the research team and help develop the report into a co-authored paper.
Anticipated Benefits for the Student
Project-specific knowledge and skills:
- Designing and conducting research across a multi-platform digital environment.
- Methodological training in either computational Discord research or digital ethnography, depending on the student’s focus.
- Navigating the ethics of researching semi-public youth spaces, including consent, the public/private boundary, and protocols for content involving minors.
- Engaging with current debates in childhood and youth studies, platform studies, and digital methods.
- Contributing to a methodology paper, including the move from fieldwork or data analysis to generalisable methodological claims.
- Engaging with stakeholder organisations, understanding their needs and how the research benefits them.
- practice.
Other transferable skills:
- Communicating research to varied audiences, including academic, interdisciplinary, public and third sector / industry.
- Project management and scoping within a defined time frame.
- Collaborative working and co-authorship within a research team.
- Treating research ethics as an ongoing
Skills, Experience and Knowledge Requirements
Essential Requirements:
- Interest in digital economies, digital platforms, gaming cultures, and/or digital childhood
- Interest in developing netnographic and/or computational skills
- Good attention to detail
- Good writing skills
Desirable Requirements:
- Familiarity with Discord and Roblox as platforms (as a user or researcher)
- Experience with qualitative data analysis
- Enhanced DBS check.