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
  • Ensslin, forthcoming articles in de Leon et al. and Pötzsch et al.
  • Videogames as Folk Worlds Symposium (Vielberth Foundation funded), April 11-12, 2024
• De Gruyter Handbook of Language and Digital Culture (ed. Astrid Ensslin and Carmen Lee, University of Hong Kong) – under contract
• Bodies in Digital Media
  • Writing New Bodies / Body Worlds: digital-born body image bibliotherapy and (re-) fictionalizing body image (SSHRC-funded)
    • Translating the Voices story app into German (Simone Blessing and Christine Wilks)
  • Menstruation / Menopause Tracking Apps, Bodies & Identities  (Marsden/NZ funded)
• New Perspectives on Literary Gaming
  • See Publications  
  • Latest project (also presented at DiGRA 2025): Ensslin, Astrid, Kübra Aksay and Sebastian R. Richter, “Analyzing Distant Play as Parasocial Resistance: Unnatural Temporality, Interpassive Dis-Reading, and Existentialist Angst in The Longing“, Humanities, special issue: “Electronic Literature and Game Narratives”.
• 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)