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School of Creative Studies and Media

Profile of Dr Astrid Ensslin BA/MA  PhD  PGCLTHE  FHEA 

Name:

Dr Astrid Ensslin

Position:

Lecturer in Digital Communication

Email:

Location:

John Philips Hall, Office no.5 (first floor)

Phone:

+44 (0)1248 383619

My main research interests are in the fields of digital discourse and communication, which includes digital forms of literature, CMC, language in the new media, games studies, cyberculture, multimodal and critical discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics. I have a BA/MA (Distinction) from Tuebingen University (2002), a Postgraduate Teaching Certificate from Leeds University and a PhD (s.c.l.) from Heidelberg University (2006). I have previously held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester. In 2004, I was awarded the First Prize in the Leeds Faculty of Arts Teaching Development Prizes. At SCSM, I convene NIECI's New Media Research Circle.

I am founding editor of the MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities and Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and Co-Investigator of the DFG/AHRC learner corpus project, 'What's Hard in German?' (2009-12), and of the Leverhulme Digital Fiction International Network (DFIN) (2009). I am Programme Leader of the AHRC collaborative postgraduate training scheme, CEDAR (2008-10).

I am interested in supervising students who wish to do research in the areas of New Media literature/stylistics, semiotics and theory, (multimodal/critical/corpus-based) discourse analysis, cyberculture, video games and virtual worlds.

Courses taught in 2009/10:

  • UXS-1041 Introduction to New Media (Sem. 1)
  • UXS-3090 Individual Assignment or Dissertation (Sem. 1/2)
  • UXS-4044 Modes of Critical and Creative Research (Sem. 1)

Administrative responsibilities in 2009/10:

  • SCSM Director of Graduate Studies
  • SCSM Research Officer / CAH Research Committee Representative
  • Member of SCSM Learning and Teaching Committee and Curriculum Development Group
  • Member of SCSM Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee

 

Office hour Sem. 2 2009/10: Wed 10.30-12.30 (starting on 3rd Feb.)

 

Selected publications:

Monographs:

  • Ensslin, Astrid (2007) Canonizing Hypertext: Explorations and Constructions. London: Continuum.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (under contract with Palgrave Macmillan) The Language of Gaming: Discourse and Ideology.
  • Ensslin, Astrid & Atik Baborie (in preparation) Cybersomatic Criticism.

Edited volumes:

Journal editorships:

Selected papers:

  • Ensslin, Astrid (in preparation) 'Metalanguage and Creationist Capitalism in Second Life'.
  • Bell, Alice, Astrid Ensslin, Dave Ciccoricco, Jess Laccetti, Jessica Pressman & Hans Rustad (under review with The Electronic Book Review) 'A Screed for Digital Fiction'.
  • Ensslin, Astrid & Will Slocombe (under review with Arts and Humanities in Higher Education ) 'Training Humanities Postgraduates in Collaborative and Digital Multimedia'.
  • Ensslin, Astrid & Eben Muse (under review with Routledge) 'Avatar Needs and the Remediation of Architecture in Second Life', in Astrid Ensslin and Eben Muse (eds) Creating Second Lives: Reading and Writing Virtual Communities.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (under review with Popular Narrative Media) '“I Want to Say I May Have Seen My Son Die This Morning”: Unintentional Unreliable Narration in Digital Fiction'.
  • Ensslin, Astrid & Cedric Krummes (forthcoming, 2012) 'Language Acquisition and Electronic Interaction' , in Julia Herschensohn and Martha Young-Scholten (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2012) ‘"What an Un-wiki Way of Doing Things": Wikipedia’s Multilingual Policy and Metalinguistic Practice’. Journal of Language and Politics.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2011) 'Computer Gaming', in Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons and Brian McHale (eds) The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2010) ‘Recallin' Fagin: Linguistic Accents, Intertextuality and Othering in Narrative Offline and Online Video Games’, in Garry Crawford, Victoria Gosling and Ben Light (eds) Online Gaming: Production, Play & Sociality. London: Routledge.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2010) '"Do Avatars Dream of Electric Steak?" – Games, Energy Supplies and the Cybernetic Body'. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, 2(1).
  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2010) ‘From (w)reader to breather: Cybertextual de-intentionalisation in Kate Pullinger et al.’s Breathing Wall’, in Ruth Page & Bronwen Thomas (eds) New Narratives: Theory and Practice. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2010) ‘Zur Rolle des Englischen als Wissenschaftssprache im britischen Pressediskurs’, in Antonie Hornung (ed) Lingue di cultura in pericolo - Bedrohte Wissenschaftssprachen. L'italiano e il tedesco di fronte alla sfida dell'internazionalizzazione - Deutsch und Italienisch vor den Herausforderungen der Internationalisierung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2010) ‘Black and white: Language ideologies in computer game discourse’, in Sally Johnson & Tommaso Milani (eds) Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Policies. London: Continuum, 205-222.
  • Ensslin, Astrid & James Pope (2010) ‘Digital literature in Creative and Media Studies’, in Roberto Simanowski, Peter Gendolla, Thomas Kniesche and Joergen Schaefer (eds) Reading Moving Letters: Digital Literature in Research and Teaching.Bielefeld: transcript, 311-28.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2010) ‘From revisi(tati)on to retro-intentionalisation: Hermeneutics, multimodality and corporeality in hypertext, hypermedia and cybertext’, in Roberto Simanowski, Peter Gendolla, Thomas Kniesche and Joergen Schaefer (eds) Reading Moving Letters: Digital Literature in Research and Teaching. Bielefeld: transcript, 145-162.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2009) ‘Respiratory narrative: Multimodality and cybernetic corporeality in "physio-cybertext"’, in Ruth Page (ed) New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality, pp. 155-65. London: Routledge.
  • Durrell, Martin, Astrid Ensslin & Paul Bennett (2009) ‘Zeitungen und Sprachausgleich im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’. Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 127, 263-79. (Sonderheft, Der Schreiber als Dolmetsch: Sprachliche Umsetzungstechniken beim binnensprachlichen Texttransfer in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit).
  • Ensslin, Astrid & Sally Johnson (2009) ‘Sprache und Identität in der englischen Nachrichtenpresse: eine korpuslinguistische Analyse’, in Oliver Stenschke & Sigurd Wichter (eds) Wissenstransfer und Diskurs, pp. 347-62. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2008) ‘Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven korpusbasierter Fachtextanalyse’, in Dorothee Heller (ed) Formulierungsmuster in deutscher und italienischer Fachkommunikation. Intra- und interlinguale Perspektiven. Bern: Peter Lang, 31-49.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2008) ‘"Im Unterhause abscheulich groß Getöse": Representations of 18th century British parliamentary democracy in early modern German newspaper discourse and their treatment of borrowings from English’, in Falco Pfalzgraf & Felicity Rash (eds) Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik. Reihe A: Kongressberichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 73-96.
  • Durrell, Martin, Astrid Ensslin & Paul Bennett (2008) 'Zur Standardisierung der Adjektivflexion im Deutschen im 18. Jahrhundert', in Waldemar Czachur & Marta Czyżewska (eds) Vom Wort zum Text. Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Kultur. Festschrift für Professor Józef Wiktorowicz zum 65. Geburtstag. Warszawa: Instytut Germanistyki Uniwersitetu Warszawskiego, 259-267.
  • Durrell, Martin, Astrid Ensslin & Paul Bennett (2007) ‘GerManC: A historical corpus of German 1650-1800’. Sprache und Datenverarbeitung, 31(1), 71-80.
  • Ensslin, Astrid & Alice Bell (2007) ‘New perspectives on digital literature: Criticism and analysis’. dichtung digital, 37. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University, available at www.dichtung-digital.com/editorial/2007.htm.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2007) ‘Canonizing hypertext: Explorations and constructions’, in Paul Georg Meyer (ed) English and American Studies in German 2006: Summaries of Theses and Monographs. A Supplement to Anglia. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 33-6.
  • Johnson, Sally & Astrid Ensslin (2007) ‘“But her language skills shifted the family dynamics dramatically.” Language, gender and the construction of publics in two British newspapers’. Gender and Language, 1(2), 229-54.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2007) ‘Breathalyzing physio-cybertext’, in HYPERTEXT 2007, Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, September 10-12, Manchester, UK. [CD-ROM]. Alpha, NJ: Sheridan Printing.
  • Johnson, Sally & Astrid Ensslin (2007) ‘Language in the media: Theory and practice’, in ibid. (eds) Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies. London: Continuum, 3-24.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2007) ‘Of chords, machines and bumble-bees: The metalinguistics of hyperpoetry’, in Sally Johnson & Astrid Ensslin (eds) Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies. London: Continuum, 250-68.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2006) ‘Hypermedia and the question of canonicity’. dichtung-digital, 36. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University, available at www.dichtung-digital.org/2006/1-Ensslin.htm.
  • Ensslin, Astrid & Sally Johnson (2006) ‘Language in the news: Investigations into representations of ‘Englishness’ using Wordsmith Tools’, Corpora: Corpus-based Language Learning, Language Processing and Linguistics, 1(2), 153-85.
  • Johnson, Sally & Astrid Ensslin (2006) ‘Language in the news: Some reflections on Keyword Analysis Using Wordsmith Tools and the BNC’, Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, 11.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2006) ‘Literary hypertext in the foreign language classroom: A case study report’, Language Learning Journal, 33, 13-21.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2005) ‘Women in wasteland - Gendered deserts in T.S. Eliot and Shelley Jackson’, Journal of Gender Studies, 14(3), 205-216.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2004) ‘Reconstructing the deconstructed: Hypertext and literary education’, Language and Literature, 13(4), 307-333.

Reviews:

  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2010) 'Tanja Storsul and Dagny Stuedahl (eds.): Ambivalence Towards Convergence: Digitalization and Media Change.' Discourse and Communication, 4.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (forthcoming, 2010) 'Theresa Heyd. Email Hoaxes: Form, Function, Genre Ecology.' Discourse Studies.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2008) ‘David Machin. Introduction to Multimodal Analysis.’ Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12(3), 393–398.
  • Ensslin, Astrid (2007) ‘Sharon Goodman and Kieran O’Halloran (eds.). The Art of English: Literary Creativity.’ Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11(3), 441-446.

Conference reports and organisation:

Language corpora:

  • Durrell, Martin, Paul Bennett & Astrid Ensslin (2007) GerManC. University of Manchester (ESRC), available from the Oxford Text Archive (search string '2537') or at www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/projects/germanc/
    • 100,000 tokens
    • 45 Early Modern German newspaper texts from five German-speaking regions (NG, WCG, ECG, WUG, EUG), 1650-1800
    • TEI-annotated and morpho-syntactically tagged
    • graded 'outstanding' in ESRC End of Award Report
  • Johnson, Sally & Astrid Ensslin (2005) LANGCORP. University of Leeds (British Academy).
    • 6,000,000 tokens
    • 7,000 newspaper articles from The Guardian and The Times, July 2004 – June 2005, containing instances of ‘language’, ‘languages’, ‘linguistics’, ‘linguistic’

Grants and awards:

  • Bangor University 125th Anniversary Scholarship for PhD project, ' Positioning Video Games in Corpus-based Discourse Analysis', 2009-12
  • DFG (German Research Council) / AHRC Research Grant: 'What's Hard in German?' (with Anke Lüdeling, Humboldt University Berlin, 2009-12): £250,000
  • MeCCSA Poster Prize 2009 (Bradford), ‘"What an Un-wiki Way of Doing Things": Wikipedia’s Multilingual Policy and Metalinguistic Practice’
  • AHRC Collaborative Research Training: 'Digital and Collaborative Multimedia in the Humanities' (with Will Slocombe, Aberystwyth University, 2008-10) - a.k.a. 'CEDAR': £8,400
  • Leverhulme Trust: 'Digital Fiction International Network' (with Alice Bell, Sheffield Hallam University, 2009): £15,500
  • British Academy Overseas Conference Grant for AILA World Congress, Essen (2008)

Invited presentations / keynotes:

  • Ensslin, A. (2009) 'New Media Writing: Towards Second Generation Criticism', keynote given at MeCCSA PGN Conference, Bangor, 9th July 2009.
  • Ensslin, A. (2009) 'Digital Literature as a Tool for (Foreign) Language Learning: Collaboration, Creativity, Transliteracy', Lancaster Literacy Discussion Group, Digital Methodologies series, Lancaster, 16th June 2009.
  • Ensslin, A. (2008) ‘Searching for Cultural Memory in Cyberspace: Califia, Marble Springs and the Mnemonics of Hypertext’, Intermediality Research Cluster Workshop, Bangor, 23 February 2008.
  • Ensslin, A. (2007) ‘Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven korpusbasierter Fachtextanalyse’, Facetten wissenschaftlicher Textproduktion und Methoden ihrer Analyse Seminar, Bergamo (I), 2-3 November 2007.
  • Ensslin, A., M. Durrell and P. Bennett (2006) ‘Towards a methodology for constructing and annotating historical corpora: Tackling structural and lexical variability in Early Modern German newspaper texts’, Digital Historical Corpora Conference, Dagstuhl (D), 3-8 December 2006
  • Ensslin, A. (2005) ‘Literarischer Hypertext - literaturwissenschaftliche und linguistische Dimensionen’, University of Göttingen (D), 6 January 2005.
  • Ensslin, A. (2003) ‘Literary Hypertext in the EFL Literature Classroom, Or Literary Competence Revisited’, University of Heidelberg (D), 18 December 2003.

Professional associations: