Hello! Welcome to my personal website. I am Professor of Digital Cultures and Communication at the University of Regensburg, where I teach and supervise students in Media, Communication, Literary, Cultural and Area Studies. I am also a Research Affiliate in Digital Culture and Narrative at the University of Bergen and an Adjunct Professor of Digital Humanities and Game Studies at the University of Alberta (CA). My research interests are:
- Digital Media Aesthetics, Communication and Culture, with a specific emphasis on:
- Electronic literature as literary media: digital-born fictions; literary games; pre-web e-lit; medium-specific narratology and multimodal analysis; feminist and applied approaches to e-lit; critical making; empirical reader/player response research; body image and critical, digital-born bibliotherapy; e-lit curatorship
- Videogame studies: literary gaming; regional and decolonial game studies; World Games and folk mechanic; metagames; the language(s)/discourse(s) of gaming; life formation games; ludonarratologies
- Cultural Studies: esp. gender and the body; postcolonial and decolonial theory
- Language in the media: videogame discourses; metalanguage; language ideologies (e.g. videogames, online fandom, and Wikipedia); critical sociolinguistics; gender and language
- Specialized language corpora: gamer language (GameCorp); written learner language (WHiG); Early Modern German newspapers (GerManC); Language in the Media.
- On a more political level, I am interested in inclusive leadership and the values, principles and practices associated with Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). These values permeate and inform my entire work – research, teaching, and administration.
On this website you’ll find an up-to-date list of my publications, as well as some information on courses I have taught and students I have supervised; funded research projects, awards, and other credentials.
To read about my reflections and my ongoing work, follow me on Twitter @AstridEnsslin.
N.B.: The headshot on this page is courtesy of Margit Scheid.
Prof. Dr. Astrid Ensslin 
I’m currently reading your newest paper – immersion in digital fiction. It’s really fascinating and addresses a lot of ideas i’m covering in my masters dissertation at the moment. I’m glad I found it :).
That’s great, Damien. Glad you liked it. What’s your dissertation about?
I m from India. Wooww really… That would be super helpful… AwaitingLikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Dr. Ensslin,
I read with considerable interest your “Electronic Fictions: Television, the Internet, and the Future of Digital Fiction” on Academia.edu. You’re describing the kind of work I’ve been doing since about 1995.
In my case it’s been science fiction that turned into a spectrum of forms you describe in your paper, including a web form of a novel and interwoven stories, an aleatory mode of reading the novel, a threaded mode, a POV mode, and a browsing mode. The work may be explored starting in its aleatory mode at http://danapaxsonstudio.com/DR%20Latest/Website/RandDemo.htm .
There are online references and glossary for the created world. Another outgrowth has been a virtual-world illustrative setting for the novel, set in the Kitely realm (Opensim). All the text, all the illustrations, the VW build, and all the code (Python, JavaScript, and LSL/OSSL) is my own.
Finally, the novel and its related works are all part of a standard e-pub package on the market. This work, which was developed over a twenty-one-year period (1995-2015), might make a useful element in your studies and teaching. If you’d like to see it, contact me and let me know what parts might be of interest.
I write text (fiction, essays, nonfiction, and verse) and code (various languages). I develop graphic designs. I’ve worked as a software engineer, a writer, and a patent clerk. Life is rich.
With warm best wishes,
Dana Paxson
Dear Dr. Ensslin,
I am interested in studying the sociolinguistics of gaming and game-based media such as Twitch at a graduate level but have not been successful in finding programs that appear to specialize in such. I was hoping that you would perhaps have a moment to help guide me in the right direction. I studied English for my undergraduate degree but would like to move forward and specialize in this subject.
Additionally, I would like to read your book, “The Language of Gaming,” but have been unable to find a copy of it available in the United States with the exception of the first chapter on a database. Is there anywhere that I can find the full text?
Thank you for your time, and I hope to hear from you.
Your work is impressive! I’ve been doing digital fiction since about 2003, and it’s great to see disciplined and sensitive attention to this field of expression. My own work has combined e-book structure, aleatory reading, and virtual-world immersion, including graphics, animations, and language play. My hope is that you’ll be elevating all these things and more to the attention of many more people (especially publishers!).
If you want to see the things I’ve done, email me. I’ll be tracking your work!
It’s interesting to see how this field is getting more attention as Covid continues to restrict physical presence. I hope most earnestly that you and your family stay well and safe.
Warmly,
Dana Paxson
Hello all you lovely people here on this comments page. Feel free to email me at my institutional address (UiBergen), and I’ll get back to you asap. 🙂