Professor John Wills

Professor John Wills is a scholar in American popular culture and history, game studies, and Disney studies. He studied at Warwick University (BA) and Bristol University (MA and PhD), before teaching in the Sociology department of the University of Essex. In September 2005, he joined the University of Kent.

John is the co-editor of the European Journal of American Culture, an interdisciplinary cultural studies journal, and sits on the editorial board of the International Journal for Disney Studies. He is on the Executive Committee for the British Association of American Studies, and a member of DIGRA, the Historical Game Studies Network, the Video Game Heritage Society, and the Institute of Cyber Security for Society here at Kent. He plays video games, probably too much, and his favourite console is the Sega Dreamcast.

John works on a range of environmental, cultural and digital topics, with special interest in 1950's American film and media, nuclear films and landscapes, video games, and the history of Hollywood, California, and the American West.

He is the author of eight books, including Disney Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2017), Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture (John Hopkins University Press, 2019), with Esther Wright, Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2023), and most recently Doom Town, USA: The Nevada Test Site as Ground Zero of 1950s American Culture (University Press of Kansas, 2026). John has written film essays for the US Library of Congress National Film Preservation Board, and contributed to Van Burnham's Supercade (2023) as well as BBC History magazine.

John has exhibited and talked about his work at a variety of events, including the British Academy Summer Showcase (2018), the Medway Gaming Festival (2022-4), the Royal Society of Arts (2008) and Being Human Festival (2019). He has been interviewed by The Guardian, Le Monde, and BBC Radio 4.

He is a recipient of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and an Eccles Centre/British Library Visiting Fellowship as well as research awards from the Historical Society of Southern California and the British Academy.

John has taught on a range of film, history, media and environmental modules in the past.

He currently teaches:

• Hollywood Film
• Video Gaming: Play and Players
• Social Media and Digital Platforms

Current PhD supervision:

• 'The Disney Family: Ritual, Identity and Generational Bonds'
• 'Ecological Eschatology: Ecosophy and Gaming American Schizo-Revolution’
  
• ‘American Entertainment Culture and the Iraq War: Patriotism, Play and Propaganda’

Past PhD projects:

• ‘Examining Perspective in Historical Games’
• ‘The Aesthetics of Protest: Graffiti, Flags and Theatre in the Red Power Movement’
• - ‘Understanding the Thirdspace of Southern California’s Surf Shops’
• ‘From Bird Song to Rotor Slap: The Sonic Experience of American National Parks’
• - ‘Outsiders in Red Rock Country: The Kaiparowits Project and the Reputation of American Environmentalism’

In the past, John has collaborated with Electrosonic (AV technology) and Parks Canada