People

ELMCIP Knowledge Base Editorial and Development Team, 2013-

Scott Rettberg, Project Leader

Stein Magne Bjørklund, Drupal developer

Hannah Ackermans, Editor, 2017-2021

Álvaro Seiça, Editor, 2014-2019

Patricia Tomaszek, Editor, 2013-2015

Aud Gjersdal, University Librarian, 2013-

Tegan Pyke, Editor, 2023-

ELMCIP 2010-2013 Project Team

The University of Bergen (NO)

Scott Rettberg [Project Leader]
Scott Rettberg, the project leader of ELMCIP, is professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. Rettberg is the cofounder of the Electronic Literature Organization, served as the organization’s first executive director from 1999-2001, and was a co-editor of the Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1. He is the coauthor of The Unknown, a Hypertext Novel (1998-2001) and The Unknown, an Anthology (2002), and the author of Kind of Blue (2003), a serial novel for email. Rettberg has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Cincinnati, an M.A. in Fiction Writing from Illinois State University and a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Coe College.

Jill Walker Rettberg [Co-Investigator]
Jill Walker Rettberg is professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. Her research focuses on how we tell stories online, and she has a particular interest in social media and personal narratives. She has published several articles on early hypertext fiction, electronic literature, digital art and social media, as well as the book Blogging (Polity Press, 2008). She also co-edited an anthology of scholarship on World of Warcraft (Digital Culture, Play, and Identity, MIT Press, 2008). Jill has been blogging at jilltxt.net for a decade, and tweets as @jilltxt.

Eric Dean Rasmussen [ELMCIP Knowledge Base Editor]
Eric Dean Rasmussen (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago) is a researcher in Digital Culture at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen. Rasmussen is a member of the Electronic Literature Research Group; a research associate for the Electronic Literature Organization; and associate editor at Electronic Book Review. Previously, he was associate professor of English at Nord-Trøndelag University College, Norway. His interests include aesthetics and ideology in 20th/21st-century literature and the impact of new media technologies on the (digital) humanities. His writing has appeared in publications including Federman's Fictions: Innovation, Theory, and the Holocaust (SUNY P, 2011), ebr, Choice, American Book Review, the minnesota review, and symplok?. Eric is currently co-editing, with Rone Shavers, a casebook on Lynne Tillman, writing a study of affect and materiality in contemporary network fiction, and serving as research editor on the ELMCIP Knowledge Base.

Patricia Tomaszek [PhD student]
Patricia Tomaszek is a PhD stipendiat at the University of Bergen. She completed her M.A. in Literature, Culture and Media at the University of Siegen, Germany (2007), participated in a study abroad at Brown University (2007), and has assisted the Electronic Literature Organization in a project archiving electronic literature since 2007. From 2006 to 2010 Patricia worked as an academic assistant in the research group "Literature in Nets. Net Literature" at the Cultural Studies Center "Media Upheavals" at the Univeristy of Siegen.

Elisabeth Nesheim [PhD student]
Elisabeth Nesheim lives in Bergen, Norway. She completed her MA in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen in 2011, and is now a PhD stipendiat at the same institute. She also holds a BA in process and project leadership from the Kaospilots in Denmark and has been working as a program coordinator for Piksel, a media lab and an annual festival for electronic art and F/LOSS technologies (2008-2011). Main focus area is the ongoing exploration of technology from a humanistic perspective, with a particular emphasis on haptic interface design. She is part of ELMCIP Bergen team as a content coordinator and co-designer of the Knowledge Base.

Thomas Brevik [ELMCIP project librarian]
Thomas Brevik is the father of two, has a masters degree in library and information science from the University of Kentucky (1996), has worked in libraries for 24 years, wrote his first blogpost in 2001 and never stopped since then. Thomas works part-time as project librarian for the ELMCIP project and tries to keep information useful and interfaces sensible. His day job is at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, which gave him time off to work for ELMCIP.

Stein Magne Bjørklund [ELMCIP Knowledge Base developer}
Stein Magne Bjørklund is a Drupal and PHP developer based in Bergen. Bjørklund is developing the ELMCIP Knowledge Base platform in Drupal and have been working with Drupal since 2006.

The Edinburgh College of Art (UK)

Simon Biggs [Principal Investigator]
Simon Biggs is a visual artist born in Australia, 1957. He moved to the UK in 1986. Since 1978 Biggs has been working with digital and interactive systems in installation, networked and other media. Venues presenting his work include Tate Modern, Whitechapel, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Ikon (Birmingham), Centre de Georges Pompidou, Academy de Kunste and Kulturforum (Berlin), Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Macau Arts Museum, Cameraworks (San Francisco), Walker Art Center, Paco des Artes (Sao Paulo), Museo OI (Rio De Janeiro), McDougall Art Gallery (Christchurch), Experimental Art Foundation (Adelaide) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He has been keynote at numerous international conferences, most recently at Cornell University’s 2010 annual Society for the Humanities Conference. Publications include Autopoeisis (with James Leach, Artwords, 2004), Halo (Film and Video Umbrella, 1998), Magnet (McDougall Art Gallery, 1997) and CD-ROMs Book of Shadows and Great Wall of China (Ellipsis, 1996 and 1999). He is Professor at Edinburgh College of Art. His URL is http://www.littlepig.org.uk.

Penny Travlou [Co-Investigator]
Penny Travlou is a Senior Lecturer at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Penny’s research is interdisciplinary focusing on the politics of public space, inclusive outdoor environments, urban cultures, digital and visual culture and (online) ethnography. As Co-I of the ELMCIP project, she is working on the ethnographic study of three online creative communities. Penny has a PhD in Cultural Geography from Durham Univesity (UK), an MPhil in Sociology from the University of Glasgow (UK) and a BA(Hons) in Sociology from Deree College (Greece).

Magnus Lawrie [ELMCIP PhD student]
Magnus Lawrie is a graduate student at Edinburgh College of Art and the recipient of the ELMCIP PhD Studentship Award. He is undertaking practice-based research involving Electronic Literature. Since completing a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and MFA in Public Art, Magnus has been active in groups concerned with Free Software and self-organizing practice. This has involved hackspaces and free media labs in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe. Magnus collaborated in establishing The Chateau Institute of Technology and, more recently, The Electron Club, Glasgow.

Blekinge Institute of Technology (SE)

Maria Engberg [Principal Investigator]
Maria Engberg is an Assistant Professor at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) where she is currently working to establish a new Bachelor’s program in Digital Culture and Communication. Engberg holds a Ph.D. in English from Uppsala University (2007) on digital poetry and is a Fulbright alumnus (2003-2004). Engberg’s research focuses on digital literature, contemporary verbal-visual literatures, graphic novels and comics, visual culture, and the impact of digital technologies on literature and culture with particular focus on digital media. Engberg is the author of several articles on digital literature, including "Aesthetics of Visual Noise in Digital Literary Arts" (Cybertext Yearbook, 2010) and "Morphing into New Modes of Writing: John Cayley’s riverIsland" (Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14.5 2006). Her current projects include a collaborative book project on contemporary multimedia literature and a single-authored book on multimodal reading practices; an Augmented Reality locative-media project in association with the Augmented Environments Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as collaborative articles on the role of the avant-garde in digital literary scholarship. Engberg is affiliated editor of the Electronic Literature Directory (2010-2012). She teaches digital literature and culture, American literature, graphic novels, literary theory, and visual culture and theory.

Talan Memmott [Co-Investigator]
Talan Memmott is Assistant Professor of digital media and culture in the Digital Culture and Communications program at Blekinge Institute of Technology and an internationally known practitioner of electronic literature and digital art with a practice ranging from experimental video to digital performance applications and literary hypermedia. His work is widely available on the Internet, and has been included in electronic anthologies, featured at festivals and conferences, and been the subject of numerous critical texts.  His current research interests include digital poetics, practice-based research methods, and digital media pedagogy in the humanities. Memmott holds an MFA in Literary Arts/Electronic Literature from Brown University and is currently completing a PhD in Interaction Design at Malmö University. Much of Memmott's work can be found at http://talanmemmott.com.

David Prater [post-doc]
David Prater is a post-doctoral researcher at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH). He graduated with a BA (Honours in Australian Literature) from the University of Sydney in 1994. He also holds an MA in English (creative writing) from the University of Melbourne (2004) and a PhD in literature and publishing from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne (2010). Since 2001 he has been the managing editor of Cordite Poetry Review, an online journal of Australian poetry and poetics (http://www.cordite.org.au). His poetry and other writing has appeared in numerous Australian and international journals and his debut poetry collection We Will Disappear was published by soi3 (papertiger media) in 2007. 

The University of Amsterdam (NL)

Yra van Dijk [Principal Investigator]
Dr. Yra van Dijk is assistant professor at the Dutch Literature department of the University of Amsterdam. She wrote a PhD thesis on typographic blanks in modern poetry, and has since specialised in the analysis and interpretation of electronic poetry. She is currently at the Centre for Research in Computing and the Arts of the UCSD as a research scholar.

The University of Ljubljana (SI)

Janez Strechovec [Principal Investigator]
Janez Strehovec received his Ph.D. in Philosophy (Aesthetics) from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1988. Since 1993 he has been working as the principal investigator at research projects on cyberarts, E-literature and the Internet culture. He is the author of seven scientific monographs in the fields of cultural studies, digital literature and aesthetics published in Slovenia. His most recent essays are included as book chapters in Reading Moving Letters (2010, ed. by R. Simanowski et al.), Regards Croisses (ed. by Ph. Bootz and Ch. Baldwin), and Phenomenology and Media (ed. by P. Majkut and A.J.L. Carrillo Canan). His interests as PI at ELMCIP project is in researching with  the present social shaped links between the digital literature, computer games, and new media art. He considers digital literary communities as by experience economy driven social and artistic entities, embedded in the Post-Fordistic world of prosumption, and algorithmic culture.

The University of Jyväskylä (FI)

Raine Koskimaa [Principal Investigator]
Raine Koskimaa works as a professor of digital culture at the Department of Art and Culture Studies, and at the Agora Game Lab, University of Jyväskylä. He teaches and conducts research especially in the fields of digital textuality, programmable media, and game studies. He has published widely around the issues of digital culture, digital literature, hyper and cybertextuality, game studies, reader-response studies, media use, and narratology. He is the co-editor of the Cybertext Yearbook Series and a member of the Literary Advisory Board for the Electronic Literature Organization and the Review Board for Gamestudies.

University College Falmouth at Dartington (UK)

Jerome Fletcher [Principal Investigator]
Jerome Fletcher is a writer and academic. He has published novels and poetry for children (OUP and Scholastic) a series of literary concept books, (Dedalus) and made several artists books. His work has been translated into nine languges. He has also made text installations, text and video pieces and a number of performances, these last in collaboration with writer Alex Martin and visual artist Paul Renner. The performances have been shown in Vienna, New York, Bregenz, London and Budapest. He is course leader for the MA Performance Writing which is a UCF off-campus postgraduate degree delivered from and in partnership with Arnolfini, Bristol, one of Europe’s major Visual Art and Performance institutions.

New Media Scotland (UK)

Mark Daniels [Executive Director]
Mark Daniels is a curator interested in smart spaces and responsive environments. He trained as an architect at Kingston University before completing the MA Art as Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University. He was the inaugural Director at Northern Architecture where he curated a diverse range of subjects including love hotels, sitooteries and science fiction cinema. As International Co-ordinator he was responsible for the look and feel of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial. An increasing interest in new media led him to Folly in Lancaster, and now New Media Scotland in 2008. He is Creative Director of the University of Edinburgh’s Inspace, a laboratory that explores the cultural significance of informatics and new media practice. Inspace is a joint research collaboration between the School of Informatics and New Media Scotland. He is based in Edinburgh and loves a little set jetting. www.mediascot.org.

ELMCIP ADVISORY BOARD

James Leach
James Leach studied Social Anthropology at Manchester University (B.Soc.Sci 1992, PhD 1997). He is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. His interests are in creativity, knowledge production, and ownership; in art, science and collaboration; and in the development of new technologies and their implications for social form. His published works have focused on kinship and creativity, place/landscape and art in Papua New Guinea, on creativity and the person, intellectual and cultural property, knowledge production and exchange in cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary contexts, gender and free software, and on the relation of law (specifically intellectual property law) to artistic and collaborative practice. www.jamesleach.org.  

Margriet Schavemaker 
Margriet Schavemaker is an art historian, philosopher and media specialist. During her career as a lecturer and research assistant at the University of Amsterdam she has been teaching new media art and media culture. Currently she holds the position of Head of Collections and Research at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam where new media are high on Schavemaker’s agenda, resulting in a.o. the ARtours project; the creation of an augmented reality platform for smartphones which can be used by museums to present their collection in innovative and interactive ways both inside and outside the museum.

Laura Borràs Castanyer
Laura Borràs Castanyer, Ph.D. in Romance Philology (1997) from the University of Barcelona, has attained the qualification of European Doctor (1997) and has been awarded the Special Ph.D. Prize (1998) in Social Sciences at the same university. She is an associate professor on Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the UB. She devoted the last 12 years to develop the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) on the literary field –mainly on Comparative Literature and Digital Literature as well. Member of the Literary Advisory Board of the ELO since 2001, and from 2000 she directs and is the main investigator of the International Research Group HERMENEIA - made up of professors and investigators from various European and American universities - whose mission is to study connections between Literary Studies and Digital Technologies. Academic Director of the M.A. Programme on Literature in the Digital Age at the University of Barcelona. She has organized the e-poetry festival 2009 in Barcelona. With Rita Raley, Brian Kim Stefans, and Talan Memmott, she has been editor of the Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 2 (2008-2010).

Serge Bouchardon
Serge Bouchardon graduated in literature from the Sorbonne University (France). After working as a project manager in the educational software industry for six years, he wrote his dissertation on interactive literary narrative and is currently associate professor in Communication Sciences at the University of Technology of Compiegne (France). His research focuses on digital creation, in particular electronic literature.As an author, he is interested in the unveiling of interactivity. Research: http://www.utc.fr/~bouchard/ Creation: http://www.sergebouchardon.com/

Joseph Tabbi
Joseph Tabbi is the author of two books of literary criticism, Cognitive Fictions (Minnesota, 2002) and Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk (Cornell,1995), and co-editor of Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World-System(Alabama, 2007) and Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology (Cornell, 1997). As a Director of the Electronic Literature Organization he has set up a peer-to-peer network of emerging scholars who are currently gathering born digital works of literature for inclusion in a developing archive at http://directory.eliterature.org. Tabbi is Professor of American Literature and Media at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Friedrich W. Block
Friedrich W. Block is director of the Brueckner-Kuehner-Foundation and the Kunsttempel Gallery in Kassel, Germany. He is the curator of numerous exhibitions, literary and academic events, and he has also worked as an artist. Since 1992 he has been responsable for the "p0es1s" project on digital poetry and since 2000 for the "Kasseler Komik Kolloquium". His research concentrates on contemporary literature, language art, media poetics and humor. Block is co-editor of the "Kulturen des Komischen" series. Among others he wrote "Beobachtung des 'ICH'" (1999), edited "Komik - Medien - Gender" (2006), and co-edited "p0es1s. The Aesthetics of Digital Poetry" (2004) and "POIESIS. Poems Between Pixel and Program" (2008).

Jan Baetens
Jan Baetens is professor of cultural studies at the University of Leuven (Belgium), where he mainly teaches word and image studies. In his own research, he specializes in three fields: 1) French poetry, 2) the narratology of minor genres such as comics, photonovels, and novelizations, 3) photography. He has widely published on these issues, mostly in French. His most recent publications are a book-length study on the photonovel ("Pour le roman-photo", Brussels: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2010) and a double special issue of Poetics Today on "constrained writing" (30.4, 2009, and 31.1, 2010), which he guest-edited with Jean-Jacques Poucel. His work on poetry and constrained writing as well as on photography theory has sharpened his interest in digital culture, on which he has published recently with Jan Van Looy (Ghent University).