The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Hannah's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Hannah
Dr Hannah Wood is a Lecturer in Creative Writing and Creative Media and an award-winning writer and narrative experience designer with expertise in immersive and interactive storytelling. Her work explores how these forms invite people to embody moments and perspectives that create connection to themselves and others, and can inspire change and understanding in the world.
She also writes in other creative forms: from games, theatre and film, to prose and poetry, experimenting with how form impacts storytelling—from adapting the same story to different mediums, to how storyworlds are integrated across media platforms. Her debut novel was long listed for the Cheshire Novel Prize 2024, reaching the top 100 of 1,900 entries, and she co-leads the university's Story Research Group, which explores the foundations and futures of storytelling and experiments with story making across artistic forms.
Hannah is founder and creative director of Story Juice an interactive and immersive storytelling studio making playful experiences for everyone from individuals to audiences of 200,000, ranging from large scale, 5* reviewed and OFFIES-shortlisted immersive theatrical experiences using cutting edge sensor technologies, to multilocational adventure games using cities as stages, to SXSW-award-winning VR experiences for health and wellbeing, and an augmented reality video game that has been featured on BBC Woman’s Hour and won a Global Women in Games Award.
In 2020, Hannah was selected as one of Creative UK’s 10 female entrepreneurs; in 2022, she won a University of Plymouth Vice-Chancellor's Award for Civic and Public Engagement; and Story Juice was a regional winner and national finalist in the Barclays Entrepreneur Games Award 2022.
Hannah's projects have tackled themes including untold stories, intimacy, desire, feminism, fertility, climate change and future technology across a range of genres, exploring how these topics translate into poetic mechanics, environmental storytelling, non-linear narrative structures and integrate physical and digital storyworlds. Her work is collaborative and carefully considers representation and its role in challenging and deconstructing dominant ideologies.
Hannah also works as a dramaturg and script consultant across creative forms, was a South West Creative Technology Network Immersion Fellow exploring designing for intimacy and subversion, is experienced leading multidisciplinary teams, collaborating with artists in different fields, mentoring young creatives for organisations including the BBC and UK Games Talent, and in 2021 was selected for a programme to nurture new city leaders in Plymouth.
She's often invited to speak publicly about her creative work and research, including as the closing keynote speaker for a Gender and Games conference in tandem with a major video games exhibition at London's V&A Museum.
Before academia, Hannah was an award-winning journalist in the UK and Brazil, a digital news editor for national newspapers, a community manager for a TEDx event in Rome, a waitress, barperson, volunteer primary school teacher in Belize, ice cream lady, deli assistant and quad bike centre assistant.
Supervised Research Degrees
2021: Co-supervisor, Ché Wilbraham: AHRC-funded PhD – The Virtual Gamesmaster: A New Approach to Branching Narrative in Computer Games.
Teaching
Hannah teaches and supervises undergraduates and postgraduates across the creative arts, reflecting a multidisciplinary practice that incorporates interactive and immersive experiences, theatre, games, prose fiction, poetry, audio and film, with writing and storytelling always at the heart.
She has special interests in writing and directing for interactive, immersive and game forms, as well as in poetry, thriller and experimental literary fiction, and art that drives social change.
Hannah welcomes applications for supervision of PhD students in any form of creative writing, interactive storytelling, immersive theatre, games writing, screenwriting, narratology, combined arts, representation and identity politics, writing and narrative experiences for health and wellbeing.
She co-designed the new MA Experience Design, leads the interdisciplinary Spatial Storytelling module offered across MA programmes, and teaches on BA Creative Media, BA Creative Writing and MA Creative Writing.
She previously taught in the Theatre and Performance department at Plymouth and guest lectured in Digital Art and Technology and Games.
At Falmouth University, she taught Creative Writing, English and Games modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and supervised PhD students.
At University of Exeter, she was a postgraduate teaching assistant in Creative Writing and English Studies.
