About

My name is Matthew Aguilar-Champeau. I’m a researcher, educator, and writer currently completing my dissertation in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.

As a researcher, I’m interested in the study of culture as a product of material conditions. That is, tracing the genealogy of a cultural form through its place in the social conditions that produced it. My dissertation in particular is about the fighting game community; a gaming community that formed and developed through a specific combination of material deprivation and international cross-cultural building. My work traces a particular instance of this—the Minnesota Fighting Game Community in the context of the wider community, but also in the context of Minneapolis as a city.

As an educator, I’ve taught multiple writing-intensive courses and have quite a few thoughts on the process of teaching and making courses better through design and technology decisions. My courses have been heralded by students as “funny, but depressing,” which is potentially the highest compliment a sociologist could ever receive.

Outside of the university, I write criticism, make videos, design websites (like this one), take photographs, catalogue vinyl, and whatever else speaks to me. This site collects that work alongside my academic output, my syllabi, and the tools I use to do all of it. It’s very much a working archive, not a portfolio, and things are in various states of completion on this site. All of it, however, is my work and hopefully a testament to my interests, aesthetics, and working style.