I hold a PhD Maynooth Univerity where I studied collaborative creativity and how communities use narremes to form narratives. The main aim of this study was to create a model for studying the process of narratives, memes, and artistic works that emerges from tlarge distributed creative groups. For this study I used Twitch Play’s Pokémon as an example to come up with a model of creativity I have termed the creative engine that I hope to continue working on in the future.

My Phd Thesis can be read here. Thoguh a chater based on this research will be publishd next year as part of the Routledge Handbook of Video and Digital Authorship.

I talked on this topic at the FANS Conference which was part of Otakon. This talk can be watched here.

Diagram of Creative Engine, depicting how a communities motivation is affected by obastacles to their shared goal, resulting in artists creating art to motivate the community

I did my masters in Digital Media in the Huston School of Film & Digital Media my thesis for this was Fans Versus Votes: A Comparative Voting eLearning Tool Utilising Internet Fandom.

The original Fans Vs Votes website dealt with tlevision shows can be found at fansvsvotes.jackjohnkirwan.com.

A secondary site about Dungeons and Dragons class popularity can be found at dndvsvotes.jackjohnkirwan.com.

My bachelor’s degree was in Sociology and Politics, and Psychology in the National University of Ireland Galway.