Robertson Allen

Rob is a 2012 graduate from the UW anthropology department, where he focused his research on the interconnections between the U.S. military, the electronic entertainment industry (i.e., video games), and the labor of war. After finishing his Ph.D., Rob taught courses for several years at UW Bothell on war and entertainment, interactive media, and culture and violence. Starting 2013, he also began working part-time for another former UW anthropology graduate, Michelle Barry, for her consulting business Centric Brand Anthropology, focusing on qualitative consumer research in food. In 2014 he took a hiatus from all of this, and with the support of a fellowship at Leuphana University in Germany completed a book based on his dissertation, America's Digital Army: Games at Work and War (U of Nebraska, 2017). Rob is now a senior consultant at The Hartman Group in Bellevue, where he has worked for the past three years. Hartman's consulting and consumer research strongly leverages ethnography and an anthropological understanding of culture to provide insights to large and medium-sized food companies. Rob is more than happy to explain more about his current work, discuss the travails of labor precarity, or help strategize lines of flight--or to talk with anyone just interested in his research!