Stories that change when you take part in them
We are the ADHO Special Interest Group for Interactive Digital Narratives: an international community studying, teaching and making stories shaped by computation and participation.
Find your way in: see upcoming events, find teaching resources or join the SIG.
Join the SIG_IDN mailing list
The mailing list is the main way the SIG talks: seminar and reading-group announcements, calls for papers, conference panels, mentoring opportunities and discussion among members. Subscribe with your email address; no account is needed.
Once subscribed, post to the list by writing to [email protected].
A shared forum for a field that crosses every boundary
Work on interactive narrative has long been scattered across disciplines, institutions and technical traditions. SIG_IDN gives it a shared home within ADHO.
We advance research, teaching, critical discussion and public-facing dissemination on narratives shaped by reader or player agency, algorithmic processes, interface structures and evolving platforms. Questions of method, terminology, metadata, preservation, pedagogy, authorship, ethics and multilingual dissemination are too often tackled in isolation; the SIG is where they meet.
Initial steering committee
The founding committee represents different institutional and geographic contexts within the ADHO community, and guides the SIG through its establishment phase.
Mehulkumar Desai
Prof. Leonardo Flores
Prof. Serge Bouchardon
Prof. Geoffrey Rockwell
Dr Terhi Marttila
Rob Wittig
Deena Larsen
Dr Shanmugapriya T
Many forms, one conversation
Interactive narrative turns up in libraries, galleries, game stores, newsrooms and headsets. Pick a form to see what it covers, with a few landmark works.
Electronic literature and digital fiction
Born-digital writing in which links, code and interface are part of the text: hypertext fiction, kinetic and generative poetry, and fiction that rewrites itself as you read.
Narrative games
Games in which the story is the main thing being played, and player decisions carry narrative weight and lasting consequences.
Interactive documentary
Non-fiction that audiences navigate, explore or contribute to, often built from interviews, archives and community participation.
Locative and pervasive storytelling
Stories tied to physical places or woven into everyday life, experienced on site, on the move, or across devices and time.
XR and VR narrative
Narrative environments in virtual, augmented and mixed reality, where presence and embodiment become storytelling tools.
Procedural and AI-driven narrative
Generated, simulated and AI-mediated stories, from social simulation to systems that write alongside a human author.
Multilinear and database narrative
Stories assembled from fragments, archives and recombinable parts, where the order of the telling is itself the subject.
Coming up
Meetings, workshops, conference panels and calls for contributions from across the SIG.
Announcing soon
Creative Digital Humanities
Creative Digital Humanities: Theory and Praxis
We will soon announce an ADHO mini-conference on Creative Digital Humanities in 2027, and an edited volume of the same name. Stay tuned: subscribe to the mailing list to hear first.
Dated events will be listed here as they are confirmed.
What we do
Scholarly exchange
Online seminars, reading groups, roundtables and research conversations on theory, method, practice and historiography.
Conference programming
Panels, workshops and roundtables at the annual Digital Humanities conference, and mini conferences that bring IDN into the wider DH conversation.
Community resources
A shared vocabulary, a curated bibliography, a repository of syllabi and case studies, and guidance on metadata, preservation and ethics.
Mentorship
Mentoring sessions, project incubators, networking and feedback forums, with particular attention to early-career scholars and practitioner-scholars.
Collaboration and advocacy
Dialogue with communities such as the Electronic Literature Organization, DiGRA and the Indian Consortium for Interactive Digital Narratives.
News
Stay tuned. We are soon announcing the ADHO mini-conference “Creative Digital Humanities”, 2027, and an edited volume on “Creative Digital Humanities”. Subscribe to the mailing list for the call.
Find your way in
If you research
Join seminars and reading groups, present on SIG panels, and help build shared vocabularies, datasets and metadata practice. Early-career researchers get mentoring and feedback.
If you teach
Borrow and contribute syllabi and teaching materials, and help use interactive narrative to build digital literacy in classrooms and public settings.
If you make
Bring the perspective of artists, designers and toolmakers into the scholarship, find collaborators, and help shape preservation and documentation practice for interactive works.