Current Projects

Entire team:

  • “Project StoryMachine: Exploring Implications of Recommender Based Spatial Hypertext Systems for Folklore and the Humanities”, DFG/AHRC bilateral grant, 2025-2028 (German PI; with Profs. Jane Winters [UK PI] and Christopher Ohge, University of London; Claus Atzenbeck, Hof University of Applied Sciences; Sarah Diefenbach, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Ceri Houlbrook, University of Hertfordshire; and Sam Brooker, University of the Arts London.
  • Transregional Game Studies, Folk Worlds and Folk Mechanic
  • De Gruyter Handbook of Language and Digital Culture (ed. Astrid Ensslin and Carmen Lee, University of Hong Kong) – under contract
  • Bodies in Digital Media
  • New Perspectives on Literary Gaming
    • Richter / Aksay / Schönberg / Scuderi / Ensslin: Literary Gaming Refigured: A Ren’Py Presentation for the ELO conference 2024  
    • Aksay / Blessing / Ensslin / Richter / Schönberg (forthc.), “‘The Name of the Reader’: Constructing the Bookish Player in Pentiment, in Theresa Krame and Jan-Noël Thon (eds.), Metareference in Videogames: Mappig the Margins of an Interdisciplinary Field. New York: Routledge.
  • AI and Digital-born Fiction
  • Empirical reader research on VR fiction and “distance design” for critical empathy studies, memory spaces and medial reading (Bell and Ensslin, ch.6 in Reading Digital Fiction,  Ensslin & Bell in Lutostański, forthcoming; Ensslin & Ceuterick in DLA Marbacher Schriften, ed. Kinder & Çakir, forthcoming)

PhD projects:

  • Death and Failure in Games: Existentialism and Social Action (Sebastian Richter)
  • The Hard Core of Games – Narratological and Persuasive Potential in Reading Formal Game Elements (FS Schönberg)
  • The Societal Implications of AI in the Cultural Industries (Edip Sönmez)