I am Hanna Schraffenberger — a creative researcher working in the intersection between science, art and technology. My research interests include human-computer interaction, augmented reality as well as interfaces for musical expression.
I was born in Stuttgart (Germany) in 1983 and studied Audiovisual Media (BEng) from 2005 until 2008 at Stuttgart Media University. Subsequently, I have been a graduate student at Leiden University, The Netherlands. I completed my Media Technology MSc with honors in 2011. In addition to my studies, I have been active as a musician, educator and lecturer and contributed to conferences, festivals, concerts, contests and exhibitions.
Currently, I am a researcher at the “Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence” group at Tilburg University and as a PhD student at the Media Technology research group at Leiden University. My research examines the fundamental characteristics and potential manifestations of augmented reality (AR). More specifically, I investigate those unique AR scenarios and experiences that have no equivalent in a purely physical world. I am supervised by Edwin van der Heide and my promotor is Bas Haring. In the course of my PhD trajectory I have combined theoretical research with the development of new forms of augmented reality. During the first 3 years of my PhD research, I have also been working as a researcher in residence at the Augmented Reality Lab (formerly based at the Royal Academy of the Arts, The Hague, The Netherlands) as part of a cooperation between Leiden University, the Augmented Reality Lab and Delft University of Technology.
Aside from doing research, I work as a lecturer. I am developing and teaching courses on human-computer interaction, augmented and virtual reality, data visualization, interaction design, usability and programming. In addition to teaching students, I am also interested in communicating science to a broader audience with both conventional and unconventional kinds of media. I have acted as the editor-in-chief of the AR[t] magazine, in which researchers from all over the world share their interest in Augmented Reality, discuss its applications in the arts and provide insight into the underlying technology.