Kari Kraus

Kari Kraus is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the College of Information Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland. She is co-director of BookLab and pursues research and creative work at the intersection of new media, digital humanities, human-computer interaction, and AI-generated poetry.

Research Interests:

• New media and digital humanities
• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
• AI- and computer-generated poetry
• Book history and print culture
• Transmedia storytelling & Alternate Reality Games
• Preservation of virtual worlds

Her scholarly and creative output explores how computational systems can generate poetic texts, how narrative experiences can span multiple media platforms, and how cultural heritage institutions can safeguard born-digital artifacts. She has led federally funded projects that pair humanistic inquiry with design research, producing award-winning interactive experiences such as the NASA-partnered games DUST and The Tessera.

Major Grants & Recognition:

• Principal Investigator, IMLS Digital Humanities Internship Grant
• Co-Principal Investigator, NSF grant on Alternate Reality Games and transmedia storytelling (with Derek Hansen)
• Local Co-PI on two grants for preserving virtual worlds
• NASA partnership on DUST (2015) and The Tessera—Official Selection, IndieCade 2017
• Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies, Library of Congress (2019)

At Maryland she co-directs BookLab with Matthew Kirschenbaum, a makerspace and research hub dedicated to the past, present, and future of the book. She is currently completing Embarkings, a volume of computer-generated poetry.