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Film & Digital Media Alumni
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2020
Research interests: Intersection of music and political life, social movements, state oppression, and diaspora, with a particular interest in the Basque Country
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program - Class of '16
Joor Baruah is an audiovisual artist interested in using documentary + idoc, photography, music and new media forms for social change.
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2022
Research Interests: Responses to the current racial justice movement in evangelical churches; settler colonialism in the U.S.
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2021
Research Interests: Child Welfare - particularly the psychological ramifications of trauma; Social Justice - immigration and refugee rights; Auteur and Schreiber Theory - pertaining to its application in documentary filmmaking; Latinx Diaspora; Surveillance and Genocide Studies; End-of-life Rights;
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2020
expressions of environmentalism, extinction, ethics of environmental policies, fisheries, "bush radio" in Alaska
PhD in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Expanded documentary, experimental ethnographic film, environmental justice, eco-disasters, multispecies ethnography, invasive species, the anthropocene, and jellyfish.
PhD in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Stop motion animation, cinematography, animal representation, animal death
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2016 , Assistant Professor, Department of Communication at CSU East Bay , Dissertation Title: Transmedia arts activism & Language Revitalization: Critical Design, Ethics & Participation in Third Digital Documentary
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2016
Social Documentation MFA, 2023
As a queer immigrant woman of color, Janet Chen works to support underrepresented and marginalized communities. She is a filmmaker, organizer and educator. She has worked at UC Irvine, Outfest and Visual Communications.
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018, Lecturer in UC Santa Cruz Film and Digital Media Department, Dissertation Title: Instant Messenger: The Pony Express, Media, and Modern Virtuality
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2021
Human rights, documentary ethics, conscious decision-making
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018, Assistant Editor at Film Quarterly and Lecturer in the School of Film and Media at Loyola Marymount University, Dissertation Title: Deviant Programming: Curating Queer Spectatorial Possibilities in U.S. Art-house Cinemas, 1968-1989
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2016, Faculty Fellow at the Center for Experimental Humanities at New York University, Dissertation Title: Time Machines: Making and Unmaking Rice
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2016
Social Documentation MFA, 2023
Research Interests: Cuban culture and performance; Latin America and the Caribbean; US imperialism and interventionism; immigrant identity and integration; education equity; data visualization; community arts and artivism
Film & Digital Media Ph.D, 2023
Border studies, critical geography, affect theory as well as surveillance studies and militaristic technology
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2020
Research Interests: Stories and identities of marginalized peoples
Social Documentation MFA, 2023
Research Interests: Film/Media Analysis, Leftist/Socialist Political movements, Transgender politics, Abolition, African-American and Asian-American studies, Korean Reunification and Imperialism/Colonialism studies
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2022
Research Interests: Observational documentary, the film essay, autobiographic and experimental nonfiction; american carcerality and abolition/transformative justice; panasian diasporic communities, and queer-of-color feminisms.
M.A., Film and Digital Media, 2020
Documentary, counter-narratives, social movements, identity, gender, Arabic graffiti, spatiality
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018 , Assistant Professor in Film Production at Seattle University, Dissertation Title: From Prison Yard to Field of Play: Documentary Histories of Race and Movement in Film, Television and New Media
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018
Social Documentation MFA, 2023
Amrit Kaur is a South Asian community organizer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, CA.
Social Documentation MFA, 2023
Colleen Kelley graduated from Kenyon College with degrees in Film and English. She was awarded Honors by the college’s Film and Theater Department for
electing to complete a thesis project of an original screenplay and television series. She also studied film in Wellington, New Zealand.
Film and Digital Media Ph.D, 2023
Chris is interested in exploring different artistic methods for critical interrogation of digital systems, with a special focus on games and game art.
PhD, March 2020, Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Oakland Museum, Lecturer
Documentary, landscape, urban studies, environmental activism.
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program - Class of 2019
Lareau’s research interests include racial justice, allyship, and the legacy and processes of segregation and gentrification.
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2021
Decolonial feminist theory, indigenous political movements, preservation of traditional healing practices in the Americas, food justice and land sovereignty in the Americas, Peruvian Diaspora, queer theory, feminist film theory, Latin American studies, and labor studies.
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2020
Research Interests: critical race and ethnic studies; visual anthropology; agro-ecology; landscape; diaspora; urban studies; social movements; feminisms
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program - Class of 2018
Ethnographic photography essay exploring the cultural landscape of Virginia City, Nevada, the silver-mining boomtown home to the Comstock Lode of 1859.
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Feminist Film Praxis, Women’s and Queer Film Historiography, Technology and Social Change
Social Documentation MFA, 2023
Research Interests: US Military base ecologies in Asia, American military culture, experimental documentary filmmaking, performance in documentary, fetishization of Asian women, mixed-race Japanese identity, queer cinema, Asian-American identity, Queer Asian cinema, anti-capitalist filmmaking pract
Graduate Student
Film/video, transmission arts, visual anthropology, critical archival practice
Film and Digital Media Ph.D, 2023
Black Diaspora, Urbanism, Immigration, Black Cinema
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2020
Research Interests: Multimedia projects that examine the complex relationships communities have to their physical and social environments
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program - Class of '16
Using participatory methods to tell stories of people who don't traditionally have the agency to author their own stories is the guiding force in his life. The reason he became an educator is the reason he became a filmmaker.
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Rebecca Ora/rora is a mixed-media artist, performer and scholar based in California whose darkly humorous socially-engaged work explores comedy, discomfort, conflict, and the limits of "appropriate" representation of trauma.
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program - Class of 2019
Public & private space, design, emotion, social heritage
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Noise, mediation, DIY electronics, semiotics of consumer media technologies, signal interference
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2016, Dissertation Title: The Conditions of Possibility, Assistant Professor, Department of Art, Stony Brook University, NY
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2016
Film and Digital Media Ph.D, 2023
participatory documentary, first-person film narratives, video essays, multimedia storytelling, queer cinema, middle-eastern studies, film/media studies
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Film and digital media as a radically new form of public forum, new media, participatory archive, and open subjectivity.
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program - Class of 2018
Occupational scavengers in Northeast Thailand
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2021
Art and social change; Activism; Gender roles in Islam; Muslim women surfers
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2017, Dissertation Title: Generic Catastrophes: Case Studies on the Use of Language in Postwar Sound Art
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2017
Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media, 2021
Surveillance/sousveillance/dataveillance studies, conceptual documentary practice, cinema of social justice, intervention art, media archeology, and experimental histories
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2020
Research Interests
Identity Development and Agency - particularly in the context of immigration
Space and Place - the social and political implications of space, gentrification
Cultural Narratives - the selling of the "American Dream" and its impact on segments of the American populatio
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2021
Film and documentary studies, Philippine studies, expanded documentary, transmedia, spatial montage, public sphere, counterpublics, multimedia journalism, art history and theory, labor
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2022
Lara lives and works in Beirut, she is currently enrolled in an MFA in Social Documentation at UCSC. She graduated with distinction from an MBA in Art Management (2016) from IESA in Paris, France, and a BA from the Department of Fine Arts and Art History (2013) from the AUB, Lebanon.
Film and Digital Media Ph.D, 2023
Activism, interactive and computational media, biotechnology, bioart, experimental film, augmented reality, virtual reality, interactive fiction, and gaming
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018, Assistant Professor in Film Studies at Seattle University , Dissertation Title: The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research of Animal Life
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2018
Graduate Student
disability studies, queer/sexuality studies, universal design for performance/media
Social Documentation MFA, 2023
I am an aspiring documentary filmmaker who is passionate about the ways that media plays a role in social justice practices. I graduated from DePauw University as a Media Fellow with a Conflict Studies major and a Gender Studies/ Film Studies double minor.
Graduate Student
Documentary and Video Art; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Cinema Studies; Hong Kong Studies
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Immersive environments for teaching history/archaeology – especially buried women’s history – in embodied and interactive ways.
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2021
Social movements, prison abolition, decolonization, immigrant rights, criminalization, carceral politics, state violence, black and brown self-determination, latinidad, youth movements, popular pedagogy
PhD in Film and Digital Media, 2022
participatory archives, internet art, the public domain, metadata, panoptics, forensic aesthetics, open video, free culture
Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media, 2021
Interested in exploring the role of art in the on-going process of healing, in relation to playful interactive technological art and post-human bodies
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2022
Research Interests: Refugees, Roma, human rights, sex trafficking, and immigration.
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2022
Committed to a practice based in conceptual, intellectual, and historical consideration of video, performance, sound, and the cultural framework of place.
Ph.D in Film and Digital Media, 2022
archival audiovisual, video installation, documentary film, Colombia, exile in Latin America.
M.F.A. Student – Class of 2020
Multimedia communications, social movements, social justice. Music and cinema, popular culture and Latin American folklore.
Graduate Student, SocDoc Program - Class of '18
Children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States and their struggle to feel as if they "belong" in the US.