À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ

My research seeks to intervene in biased technological design and to heighten technological literacy. As the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Social Change and Director of The U&AI Lab at U À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ, I use interdisciplinary and creative methods for responsible AI. I am the Co-Director of the TRuST Scholarly Network at UÀ¶Ý®ÊÓƵ with Donna Strickland and Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher, focusing on public trust in expertise in science and technology.

With roots in Media Studies, English Literature, Cultural Studies, and Design, my work is interdisciplinary by nature. I also hold a visiting Associate Professor II position at the University of Bergen, Norway in their Centre for Digital Narrative. I am an active member of the international electronic literature community, using theories in narrative, critical design, and critical code studies to analyze texts as well as create them in interactive formats such as generative poetry and VR storytelling.

I am always open to learning new things, including from other disciplines, so if you have an idea, you should contact me. (:

For more information, please see my CV:?

Edited Books

EnTwine: A Critical and Creative Companion to Teaching with Twine, edited by Emily Christina Murphy and Lai-Tze Fan. In production; publication date: Fall 2026.

Post-Digital: Critical Debates from?electronic book review?volume 2, edited by Joseph Tabbi and co-edited by Jan Baetens, R.M. Berry, David Ciccoricco,?Lai-Tze Fan, Davin Heckman, Robert Cashin Ryan, Laura Shackelford, and Brooks Sterritt. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Edited Special Journal Issues

¡°Vibrant Materialities across Media, Literature, and Theory,¡± edited by Monique Tschofen and Lai-Tze Fan. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies. September 2023. .

¡°Critical Making, Critical Design,¡± edited by Lai-Tze Fan. Special double issue of?electronic book review?and?the digital review. 12 September 2021. Funded by the Canadian federal SSHRC Connection Grant.?;??.

¡°Decoding Canadian Digital Poetics,¡± edited by Dani Spinosa and?Lai-Tze Fan.?electronic book review. 7 February 2021.?

Recent Articles

Tschofen, Monique, Siobhan O¡¯Flynn, Jolene Armstrong, Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, and Kelly Egan. ¡°A Research-co-Creation of Care: Feminist Speculation, Collaboration, and Curation in the Decameron 2.0 Virtual Gallery.¡± University of Toronto Quarterly vol. 93, no. 4, 2025, pp. 612-52. Special issue: ¡°Representing a (Post)Pandemic World (1722 ¨C 2022).¡±

Lai-Tze Fan, Sunnyside Middle School students (2024 cohort), Graham Baechler, and Tatum Weicker. ¡°Dreaming Ourselves Forward: The Sunnyside Wisdom Project.¡± the digital review, vol. 4. Special issue: ¡°Augmenting Creativity.¡± 9 June 2024.

Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°Reverse Engineering the Gendered Design of Amazon¡¯s Alexa: Methods in Testing Closed-Source Code in Grey and Black Box Systems.¡±?Digital Humanities Quarterly?vol. 17, no. 2.?Special issue: ¡°Critical Code Studies.¡±?

Fan, Lai-Tze, Kishonna Gray, and Aynur Kadir. ¡°How to Design Games that Promote Racial Equity.¡±?electronic book review. Special issue: ¡°Critical Making, Critical Design.¡± 12 September 2021.??

Didur, Jill and?Lai-Tze Fan.?¡°Between Landscape and the Screen: Locative Media, Transitive Reading, and Environmental Storytelling.¡±?Media Theory?2.1 (2018): 79-107. Special issue on ¡°Geospatial Memory.¡±?

Fan, Lai-Tze.?¡°On the Value of Narratives in a Reflexive Digital Humanities: Towards Representing Figurative Meaning in the Database.¡±?Digital Studies/Le champ num¨¦rique?8.1 (2018): 1-29.

Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°Material Matters in Digital Representation:?Tree of Codes?as a Literature of Disembodiment.¡±?Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal?51.1 (2018): 37-53.

Fan, Lai-Tze, Mary Grace Lao, Priya Rehal, Andrea Luc, and Anthony Jeethan. ¡°Navigating Racialized Spaces in Academia: Critical Reflections from a Roundtable.¡±?COMMposite?19.3 (2017): 59-68.

Fan, Lai-Tze.?¡°Writing while Wandering: Material and Spatial Contingency in Locative Media Narratives.¡±?Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies?23.1 (2017): 5-19. Special Issue: ¡°Writing Digital: Practice, Performance, Theory.¡±?

Recent Book Chapters

Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°Digital Nature.¡±?Nature and Literary Studies, edited by Peter Remien and Scott Slovic. Series: ¡°Cambridge Critical Concepts,¡± Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 339-54.

Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°From Screen to Silicon: Reverse Engineering the Computational Infrastructure of Nick Montfort¡¯s?Round.¡±?Digital Narrative Spaces: An Interdisciplinary Examination, edited by Daniel Punday, Routledge, 2021, pp. 88-108.

Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°e-Waste Peep Show: A Research-Creation Project on the (In)visibility of Technological Waste.¡±?Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene, edited byChelsea Miya, Oliver Rossier, and Geoffrey Rockwell, Open Book Publishers, 2021, pp. 257-273.

Tschofen, Monique, Nataleah Hunter-Young,?Lai-Tze Fan, and Dan Browne. ¡°Reforming Critique: Critical Making as Method and Practice.¡±Comparative Literature in Canada: Issues of Scholarship, Pedagogy and Publishing in the Contemporary Conjuncture, edited bySusan Ingram and Irene Sywenky, Lexington Books, 2019, pp. 135-157.

Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°Symbiotic Authorship: A Comparative Textual Criticism of AI-Generated and Human-Edited Poetry.¡±?ReRites: Responses, edited by Stephanie Strickland, Anteism, 2019, pp. 57-64.

Other Select Publications

Short article:?Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°Research-Creation for the Community: Pedagogy, Feminist Maker Cultures, and the Critical Work of Making Face Masks in the Time of COVID-19.¡±?English Studies in Canada?vol. 44, no. 4, 2021 (listed as 2018), pp. 39-46.?/. Solicited.

Essay:?Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°How to Write an Academic Cover Letter.¡±?Hook & Eye,?5 Oct 2017.?. ?Solicited. Re-posted 8 Oct 2018.

Recent Research-Creation

Digital art installation: Chang, Angela, Lai-Tze Fan, Biyi Wen, and Ka Lee Wong. Poetry, prose, JavaScript. Dim Sum µãÐÄ. July 2024.

- 2024 Meeting of the Electronic Literature Organization. Virtual. July 2024.

AI installation: Sunnyside Middle School students (Kitchener-À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ, Canada), Graham Baechler, Lai-Tze Fan, and Tatum Weicker. Dreaming Ourselves Forward: The Sunnyside Wisdom Project. Dream.AI art generator. 2024.

VR installation: Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°0328.¡± Still image. Memory Eternal. 2023.

VR installation: Fan, Lai-Tze. ¡°0327.¡± Still image. Memory Eternal. 2023.

VR installation: Armstrong, Jolene, Kelly Egan, Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Angela

VR art installation:?Armstrong, Jolene, Kelly Egan,?Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, Siobhan O¡¯Flynn, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, and Monique Tschofen. ¡°Memory Eternal: The Book of Mourning.¡± Unity for VR. 2023 Meeting of the Electronic Literature Organization. July 2023.?Role:?Writer, researcher, UX/UI consultant.

Digital art gallery:?Armstrong, Jolene, Kelly Egan,?Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Angela Joosse, Kari Maaren, Siobhan O¡¯Flynn, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, and Monique Tschofen. ¡°Decameron 2.0 Virtual Gallery.¡± Unity for WebGL. 2022 Meeting of the Electronic Literature Organization. May 2022.?

Digital art installation:?Fan, Lai-Tze, Anne Sullivan, Anastasia Salter.?Masked Making:?Uncovering Women¡¯s Craft Labor during COVID-19.?Exhibition of the?2021 Meeting of the Electronic Literature Organization. University of Aarhus, Denmark and University of Bergen, Norway. April 2021.?

Electronic literature:?Fan, Lai-Tze?and Nick Montfort. ¡°Dial,¡± digital poem.?The New River: A Journal of Digital Art and Literature?Spring 2020, n.p., 4 May 2020.??and?Electronic Literature Collection 4.?Eds. Kathi Inman Berens, John Murray, Lyle Skains, Rui Torres, and Mia Zamora. July 2022.?

Mobile application:?Didur, Jill,?Lai-Tze Fan, Tony Higuchi, Emma Saboureau, Eric Powell.?Global Urban Wilds, Greening Narrative Project. Funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant. 08/2016 ¨C 10/2021.?

• PI, SSHRC Insight Grant, 2025 ¨C 2029.
• PI, SSHRC Connection Grant, 2025 ¨C 2027.
• PI, HSS Endowment Fund, U À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ, 2025.
• PI, À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ.AI Nexus Seed Funding, 2024.
• Co-Applicant, SSHRC Partnership Grant, 2024 ¨C 2031.
• Arts Award for Excellence in Research, U À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ, 2023.
• Outstanding Performance Award, U À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ, 2023.
• N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism, international Electronic Literature Organization, 2022.
• PI, Tier 2 SSHRC Canada Research Chair, 2022 ¨C 2027.
• PI, CFI-JELF for ¡°The U&AI Lab¡±, 2022 ¨C 2027.
• Co-Applicant, SSHRC Partnership Grant, 2022 ¨C 2029.
• PI, SSHRC Connection Grant, 2021 ¨C 2022.
• PI, Canada First Research Excellence Fund/Quantum Quest Seed Fund, 2021 ¨C 2023.
• PI, SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2020 ¨C 2023.

I supervise, train, and mentor students through my U&AI Lab, which offers safe spaces for quiet working, collaborative research, research-creation (creative research experiments), and team building and exchanges. Graduate students can e-mail me to discuss supervision, mentorship, and collaborations in the following areas:

• Science and technology studies (especially AI and digital media)
• Research-creation
• Contemporary literature
• Electronic literature, including AI-generated literature
• Interdisciplinary approaches to technology

I am open to co-authoring papers for conferences and publication with students and artists.