The Geek Anthropologist is excited to welcome two new members to our editorial team! Laya Liebseller and Alissa Whitmore are joining us as acquisitions editors, which means that we have thoroughly deputized them to kick down your door and demand that you write an article for us. Although our roles run pretty fluid over here, Laya will be specializing in gaming content and social media and Alissa will focus on pedagogy, pop culture, and book reviews. Stay tuned for more from them by way of introductions, but consider this a teaser trailer for those features.

Laya Liebseller

Laya is an anthropologist by day and table-top gamer by night, studying at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her Thesis, Rules of the House, focused on the power relations within World of Darkness live-action role-player communities in America. Her current PhD work focuses on larpers in Scandinavia, and how culture impacts the way we play as a species. Her interests include nerds, geeks, and gamers of all types, horror and dystopic worlds in popular culture, institutions of play, and boundary making within play spaces (both internal and external).

Conatct: Twitter @playscholar, Email laya [at] uwm [dot] edu

Alissa Whitmore

Alissa is an archaeologist, gamer, and pop culture enthusiast. Her interests include portrayals of archaeology and the ancient world in popular culture, alternative archaeology, and Greco-Roman magic. As a professor and museum educator, Alissa loves teaching anthropology and history with science fiction, fantasy, and comics, as well as questioning the impacts that these media have on our understanding of ourselves, others, and the past. She has varying degrees geekspertise in superheroes and comics, role-playing video games, Batman, and Magic the Gathering. She also has a plastic, life-size skeleton named Dem Bones.

Contact: alissa [dot] whitmore [at] gmail [dot] com

Featured Image by Sairobee.