Laila Shereen Sakr

Laila Shereen Sakr is an Assistant Professor of Media Theory & Practice at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Engaged in an ongoing posthuman performance of VJ Um Amel, she theorizes technology and the body through multimodal creative research. At UCSB, she co-founded Wireframe, a new digital media studio that supports critical game design and digital arts practice. Sakr has shown in solo and group exhibitions and performances at galleries and museums including the San Francisco MoMA, National Gallery of Art in Jordan, Camera Austria, Cultura Digital in Brazil, Kirchner Cultural Centre in Argentina, Tahrir Cultural Center in Cairo, Fridge Art Gallery in Washington, DC, and 100 Copies in Egypt, among other venues. Her peer-reviewed articles appear in Middle East Critique, Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier, Networking Knowledge: Journal of the Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies, Parson’s Journal for Information Mapping, Thoughtmesh: Critical Code Journal, and Feminist Debates in Digital Humanities. Over the last two decades, she has been a leading voice in the open-source movement, in particular for Arabic localization. She is Co-Editor for the open-access journal: Media Theory, and also for After Video published by Open Humanities Press. She collaborates with MIT’s Global Media Technologies & Cultures Lab as a Researcher. At UCSB, she is Faculty Affiliate in the Feminist Studies Department, Media Arts and Technology Program, and the Center for Responsible Machine Learning. She serves on the advisory, executive, and steering committees for UCSB Digital Arts & Humanities Commons, Center for Middle East Studies, and Center for Information Technology & Society. Reviews of her digital media appear in The Wall Street Journal, Science, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Voice of America, Al-Ahram, Art Territories, Digital Media and Learning, Egypt Independent, Medium, Mada Masr, Jadaliyya, and The Creators Project.