This is the official homepage for Lisbeth Klastrup's Ph.D. thesis

© Lisbeth Klastrup, 2003, 2005

History
This thesis was defended and passed in June 2003.
On the recommendation of the thesis evaluation commitee I chose to delay the publication of it, in order to tidy up the thesis, which was, due to external reasons, handed in sooner than I would ideally have wanted. The process of adding the final corrections to the thesis has been a process which took longer than intended because of other commitments.

Comments to this version
The work has been proofread and slightly amended here and there. However, in terms of references to worlds and current developments, no updates has been made since 2003 and in terms of overall content and theoretical statements, this version is the same as the 2003 version.

Further work and call for support
There is a lot of work still to be done on online virtual worlds. This thesis is just a first step in the right direction. A second step is my current research project on players' stories about their characters' death in virtual world. I would be happy if you would support my research by sending players to - or submitting your own stories at - my survey website: www.death-stories.org.

Availability & conditions of use
The thesis is now taken off the net, but is available for researchers and students on request. It is a 11MB pdf.file.
If you want to reprint or copy parts of the thesis for your students, please respect my copyright and contact me in advance.

Abstract
Frontpage [216 kb, jpg.]

NB! A limited number of prints of this thesis is available. If you would like one such, please contact me.

Author's contact info: lisbeth[AT]klastrup.dk

This page updated: March 14th, 2005.