Anna-Alexis Larsson / English
Graduate Student Researcher
Started at the NML: March 2018alarsson@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Projects: #LastNightInSweden; BlabRyte
NML Award: The New Media Lab Digital Dissertation Award (May 2020)
Anna-Alexis Larsson is a doctoral candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research investigates the tension between inquiry and performance in the composition process, and especially within the First-Year Writing course. Employing interactive and digital technologies, her work uses an ecological model of the writing classroom to find ways of facilitating inquiry-based writing that incorporate a theory of persuasive technology. Using archival research funded by the Center for the Humanities at CUNY, Alexis draws from the work of anthropologist Gregory Bateson to draw an ecology of writing.
As an instructor of college writing, Alexis is designing and testing a web application for private writing to encourage students to build a regular writing practice while urging instructors to reevaluate and redefine their concept of low-stakes writing.