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Research Group Electronic Literature

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ELO 2021 Conference Logo

The Bergen Electronic Literature Research Group (BEL) studies literary works created for digital media and relate digital art forms. In 2021, our research group is  co-organizing the ELO 2021 Conference and Festival: Platform (Post?) Pandemic, the most important annual conference in the field. An important project for us is the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base, the  most extensive open-access research database in the international field. Our research often combines theory and practice, as in the award-winning VR narrative Hearts and Minds, winner of the 2016 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature. Members of our group frequently publish scholarship on electronic literature, including recently Digital Fiction and the Unnatural: Transmedial Narrative Theory, Method, and Analysis by Astrid Ensslin (Ohio State, 2021), the two-volume Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from Electronic Book Review, edited by Joseph Tabbi (Bloomsbury, 2020), and  Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg (Polity, 2019).

BEL frequently organizes international symposia and workshops, such as the Electronic Literature Knowledge Base Symposium and EcoDH seminar in 2018, and welcomes international speakers and visiting researchers. In 2015 we hosted the international Electronic Literature Organization conference and literary arts festival and in 2021 we are co-organizing the ELO 2021 Platform (Post?) Pandemic Conference and Festival. We embrace innovative forms of scholarly publishing, such as a four-part series of collaborative articles, conversations and interviews on the Metainterface and critical works of artistic digital media published in 2018-19 in the electronic book reviewBEL has published annual reports documenting group activities since 2011, which are available in the Knowledge Base.

Associate Professor appointed in Digital Culture
A photograph of Astrid Ensslin.

Astrid Ensslin Appointed Associate Professor at UiB Digital Culture

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Astrid Ensslin as Associate Professor with UiB Digital Culture.

2021 Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Festival
"Posthuman" exhibition poster.

2021 ELO Conference and Festival - Posthuman Exhibition

The first of several exhibitions in the 2021 Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Festival debuts this Thursday, March 4th.

Professor II Appointed in Digital Culture
NIck Montfort portrait

Nick Montfort, MIT Professor of Digital Media, Appointed Professor II at UiB Digital Culture

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Nick Montfort, Professor of Digital Media at MIT, to a two-year 20% position as Professor II with UiB Digital Culture. Montfort is noted both as a creative author of numerous and varied creative works and as a critic and theorist of digital media.

Book award
Mann i dress står foran hekk og holder en gjennomsiktig pris.

Scott Rettberg won the Hayles award for "Electronic Literature"

The 2019 N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature was awarded to UiB professor Scott Rettberg, for his monograph Electronic Literature.