Kari Kraus

Kari Kraus is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching interests focus on new media and the digital humanities, Human-Computer Interaction, digital preservation, game studies and transmedia storytelling, and speculative design. She was a local Co-PI on two grants for preserving virtual worlds; the PI on an IMLS Digital Humanities Internship grant; and, with Derek Hansen, the Co-Principal Investigator of an NSF grant to study Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and transmedia storytelling in the service of education and design. In 2015 she and collaborators partnered with NASA on DUST, a game promoting the deep-time sciences. Her most recent transmedia work (now concluded) was The Tessera, created in partnership with Brigham Young University, Tinder Transmedia, and the Computer History Museum. The Tessera was featured as a 2017 Official Selection at IndieCade, the International Festival of Independent Games, which the LA Times describes as “the video game industry’s Sundance.” With Professor Matthew Kirschenbaum Kraus co-directs BookLab, a makerspace, book arts studio, library, and press that serves ARHU and the wider campus and college park community. Currently Kraus is on residential fellowship at the Library of Congress as a Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies.