Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans
Affiliation
Research groups
Short info
Research
Hannah Ackermans researches disability and accessibility within electronic literature. Electronic literature authors are known for using technology in counterintuitive ways, even using glitches or bugs as key narrative devices. Moreover, electronic literature tends to be multimodal, including different medial modes such as text, visuals, audio input and output to create works. I argue that electronic literature’s commitment to formal experimentation is already the perfect place to consider the effects of multimodality on different readers—if only we are willing to decenter the able-bodied reader in our scholarly and creative practice.
Beyond the more narrow scope of this project, Ackermans writes about the intersection between disability, digital culture, and the environment. This includes an exploration of the digital practices associated with Norwegian Sign Language poetry, what we can learn from disabled people to address the climate crisis, and how electronic literature about illness can transform our lives.
Publications
2026
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans; Tegan Pyke; Zahra Rizvi (2026). Post-Digital Creativity in Underacknowledged Communities. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2026). Physical Bodies in Virtual Spaces. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans; Ella Maria Holi; Sérgio Galvão Roxo (2026). Episode 46: "The Wrong Body; Diverse Bodies and Digital Narratives" Live Panel with Hannah Ackermans, Ella Holi and Sérgio Galvão Roxo. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans; Ella Maria Holi; Sérgio Galvão Roxo (2026). The Wrong Body: Diverse Bodies in Digital Narratives. (external link)
2025
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2025). Showcase of the Consortium on Electronic Literature. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2025). Open Access is just the Beginning: Multimodal Data Representations for Disability-Inclusive Datasets. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2025). From Disability Dongles to CripTech: The Postgrowth Imperative for Building Truly Accessible Technology. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2025). Consortium On Electronic Literature (CELL) [poster presentation]. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2025). Let’s Build a City: Introducing the Living Glossary of Digital Narrative. (external link)
2019
- Hannah Ackermans (2019). Nodes Without Edges: Peripheries of the Database. (external link)
- Hannah Ackermans (2019). Narrating the Sociality of the Database: A Digital Hermeneutic Reading of The Atlas Group Archive and haikU. (external link)
- Hannah Ackermans (2019). How to Review a Database. (external link)
- Hannah Ackermans (2019). Electronic Literature in the Database and the Database in Electronic Literature. (external link)
2024
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans; Richard Snyder; Deena Larsen et al. (2024). LAUNCH: Accessible Bits 1.0. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2024). The Embodied Reading Experience: A Call for Creative Digital Accessibility. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans; Astrid Ensslin; Richard Snyder (2024). Co-authoring Accessible Bits. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans; Lai-Tze Fan; Tatum Weicker-O’Connor et al. (2024). Collaborative Keynote: Crossing Commercial Barriers. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans; Tegan Rhiannon Pyke; Joseph Paul Tabbi et al. (2024). (Un)Linked Open Data: Documenting E-lit in Wikidata. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2024). Let’s Build a City: The Glossary Project as Essential Work. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2024). [review] Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature. (external link)
2020
- Hannah Ackermans (2020). How an Academic Companion Website Makes Media-Specific Arguments. (external link)
- Hannah Ackermans (2020). Appealing to Your Better Judgement: A Call for Database Criticism. (external link)
- Hannah Ackermans (2020). Born-Digital Publications: Public Databases, Hypertext Journals, and Companion Websites as Digital Humanities Tools. (external link)
- Hannah Ackermans (2020). A Stretch of the Imagination: Transforming Writing Under Constraint into an Inclusive Practice. (external link)
2015
2023
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2023). Wat maakt elektronische literatuur (niet) toegankelijk?. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2023). Digital Accessibility Aesthetics: Accessibility Features as Literary Devices. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2023). “This Feature has been Disabled: Friction in Digital Accessibility” and “This Feature has been Disabled: Towards Digital Accessibility” (two-part contribution). (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2023). Unfolding Community in Electronic Literature. (external link)
2021
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2021). Follow the Pathfinders: a Case Study Approach to Production, Use, and Readership on Scalar. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2021). Classroom Netprov: A Walkthrough of Electronic Literature Support Group for Teachers. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2021). [book review] Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital Humanities. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2021). Better with the Sound On; or, The Singularity of Reading and Writing Under Constraint. (external link)
- Hannah Maria Leontine Ackermans (2021). Genre-bending on an Academic Platform: Three Creative Works on Scalar. (external link)
Consortium on Electronic Literature
Hannah Ackermans is the current project coordinator of the Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL). CELL is a cross-database collaboration in the field of electronic literature. Currently, CELL is hosted and led by the Center for Digital Narrative (CDN) at the University of Bergen, Norway, in collaboration with all member databases.
The centerpiece of CELL is The Index, which gives access to an expansive collection of records across electronic literature databases through one Wikibase. It is a peer-reviewed collection of Wikidata items. The Index makes the data of individual databases more available to the electronic literature community and the public. This in turn gives the individual databases a larger readership.
In addition to the Index, CELL also encourages further collaboration among electronic literature scholars. CELL has a quarterly newsletter to which all members can contribute to share their events, achievements and requests with the wider community. CELL organizes events and roundtalbes to communicate with its members and prospective members about current projects and future strategy. We also offer to host a Wikibase environment for working groups who would like to create a database but do not have the support for the technical structure.
Living Glossary of Digital Narrative
Hannah Ackermans is the currect coordinator of the Living Glossary of Digital Narrative (LGDN), an online terminology base for disciplines related to the crafting and study of digital narrative. The LGDN is a growing resource, with new entries being published on a regular basis. As such, it adapts to and reflects evolving terminology use across multiple fields. The LGDN collects multiple meanings of a singular term in one entry, providing a cohesive overview of how a term is employed across different disciplines. This shared vocabulary will aid in the building of a unified community, allowing for productive discussion both within and across disciplines.