Prof. Dr. Astrid Ensslin

Great to see "folk mechanics" catching on as an inspiration for game development! Thanks, Sebastian Richter, for the pic taken at CEEGS 2025. Can't wait to see and play a game inspired by Hungarian folklore and cultural heritage, developed by Barnabás Springer and Pietro Noceti (UMalta).

The website of the DFG Network "Knowledges of Digital Literature" (Das Wissen der digitalen Literatur) is now live. Updates will follow. digitale-burg.de/studio/das-w... @eliterature.bsky.social

“The Name of the Reader” | 10 | Constructing the Bookish Player in Pen In this chapter, we explore how Pentiment (2022) serves as an example of a metareferential medium par excellence by remediating the paradigm shift from medieval

📣New publication: “The Name of the Reader”
Constructing the Bookish Player in Pentiment

A collaborative effort in the fullest sense, with @astridensslin.bsky.social, Simone Blessing, Sebastian R. Richter, Fiona S. Schönberg
www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-...

@URegensburg students: We're hiring a pre-doc RA (SHK) for Equal Opportunities:
www.uni-regensburg.de/universitaet/stellenausschreibungen/hilfskraefte/index.html

I couldn't agree more, and recent narrative games like Disco Elysium and Pentiment have shown a similarly vast cast of rounded characters, set in paradigm-shifting times and fraught societal environments.

YouTube video by DASLAB Sonia Fizek - Materiality of Digitality. The Politics and Ethics of Making Videogames

Just released in our DAS|LAB video series: Sonia Fizek's "Videogames as Folkworlds" talk on "Materiality of Digitality: The Politics and Ethics of Making Videogames", addressing questions and dilemmas of green game design and production. @uniregensburg.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB5e...

This special issue explores the transformative potential of games, spanning analogue and digital forms and showcasing new perspectives on how games and play can be used for personal and existential development through transformative experiences.

www.gamejournal.it/g-a-m-e-issu...

YouTube video by DASLAB Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang - Decolonizing Sweave: African Tradition and Alternative Cultural Pedagogies

After a lengthy but productive/creative break, we're happy to announce the release of the latest DAS|LAB video in the "Videogames as Folkworlds" series: Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang's talk on "Decolonizing Sweave: African Tradition and Alternative Cultural Pedagogies".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv4E...

Just a reminder that the deadline for this RA position in my lab is immediately forthcoming!

German version: www.uni-regensburg.de/assets/unive...

www.uni-regensburg.de/assets/unive...

Come and work with me and my team at DIMAS! We're advertising for a research associate to join an international team of interdisciplinary researchers on the DFG/AHRC "Project StoryMachine: Exploring Implications of Recommender Based Spatial Hypertext Systems for Folklore and the Humanities".

Robin Hood, morris dances and UFOs: English folklore survey gets post-Brexit reboot A fresh look at cultural identity will follow outline of 60-year-old Survey of Language and Folklore, conducted by two academics driving a red Mini

Folkore is in the air, folks! This project by our DFG/AHRC "Project StoryMachine" Co-PIs Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook just got serious AHRC funding to conduct contemporary folklore research in the UK. Huge congrats! www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...

UK-German Research Projects in the Arts and Humanities

It's official: Our "Project StoryMachine" is one of 16 projects funded by the DFG/AHRC (German/UK) bilateral grant programme! More info / press releases to come soon! www.dfg.de/en/news/news... @eliterature.bsky.social

Big congrats to Brian McHale – 2025 winner of the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award! More than deserved!

Let's celebrate this wonderful new book! Tuesday, November 12, 4 pm UTC bit.ly/elo-salon
“Reading #Instapoetry is a timely and topical exploration of a new literary phenomenon, edited by JuEunhae Knox and James Mackay." www.bloomsbury.com/us/reading-i...

YouTube video by DASLAB Dom Ford - A world to escape to

In the second video of the URegensburg DAS|LAB's "Videogames as Folk Worlds" Symposium series, @domford.bsky.social talks about "A world to escape to: Gameworlds as otherworlds in datafied society". Here's the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hks...

Zur Konstruktion des „Bookish Players“ in ‚Pentiment‘ Zusammenfassung: In unserem Beitrag möchten wir das Videospiel ‚Pentiment‘ als metareferienzielles Medium par excellence darstellen. Das im fiktiv-oberbayerischen Tassing angesiedelte Point-and-Click-...

Thrilled to announce the publication of DAS|LAB's first article on how Pentiment constructs the Bookish Player - this one's in German, but an English sibling is in the pipeline - at copy-edit stage. Watch this space!
mittelalter.hypotheses.org/32373

We'll be releasing one video per week of the other talks given at the event. Watch this space! daslab-ur.de/events-folk/

The video of the talk I gave at the "Videogames as Folkworlds" Symposium in April, on "Folk Mechanic as Transregional Anthropocene Criticism in Indigenous Video Games" is now online. daslab-ur.de/folkmechanics/

Here's a snapshot of the Obsidian creative digital writing environment workshop Christine Wilks and I just led (mostly Christine, actually) at #ELO2024

Such a great keynote. Lots of stuff to take away for our femtech research.

Edmond Chang keynote for ELO 2024 starts now! Code/Queer Games/ Technonormativity

@edmondchang.bsky.social

Listening to Chris Klimas' keynote at the ELO 2024 Online conference. Great quote by Inform maker Graham Nelson: "An adventure game is a crossword at war with a narrative". Very true. I should have quoted him much sooner. #ELO2024

Register for ELO 2024 the online conference by July 8. No additional costs! Just join ELO or renew your membership, and you will get access to all the content!

stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/

Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity to join the hypertext research community at the 1st #ACM #Hypertext #SummerSchool. Deadline extended to 14 June 2024! Funding available! Hypertext scholars, please share this with your #PhD or #Master students.
→ ht.acm.org/ht2024/works...

I had a great time in Regensburg visiting the DAS|LAB in the past two days but I always forget to take pics during trips! I do have a photo from @astridensslin.bsky.social's inspiring lecture yesterday about (de)colonial mechanics and cartography in games, though. 🗺️

Brilliant news: Christine Wilks' digital fiction for body image narrative therapy, Voices, has been shortlisted for the Chris Meade Main Prize and Social Good categories the New Media Writing Prize. writing-new-bodies.web.app/home Please vote here: newmediawritingprize.co.uk/opening-up-2...

At DAS|LAB we're listening to a fascinating talk by @mostlyindie.com on Gentrification, food, gender and posthuman agency in Donut County. Think of it as reversing Katamari Damacy.

Was geht derzeit eigentlich in der Forschung zu Videospielen? Unsere Stuttgarter DH-Studentin Hanna Weimann hat das Symposium "Videogames as Folkworlds" von @astridensslin.bsky.social an der Uni Regensburg besucht und berichtet hier davon: www.ilw.uni-stuttgar... #DHStuttgart