Congratulations to Dr. Aynur Kadir, Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo
Our sincere congratulations to Dr. Aynur Kadir, who has accepted a position as a tenure track Assistant Professor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo!
Dr. Aynur Kadir’s research focuses on practices and theories of design and the study of interactive multimedia in the humanities, ethnographic practices, and museum curation. She works with local communities in northwest China, in the Pacific Northwest, and in the Six Nation Territories to develop digital media that documents, manages, safeguards, and represents Indigenous cultural heritage. She is exploring how different new media such as interactive documentaries, virtual museums, digital archive databases, interactive museum guides, video games and artificial intelligence systems can be designed using collaborative participatory methodologies in order to preserve and revitalize cultural heritage and heal collective trauma.
Dr. Kadir’s research interests and applied and pedagogical practice center around larger academic objectives: producing greater multimedia for social justice and decolonizing digital technologies. In her interdisciplinary research program, teaching methodology, and creative work, she highlights community-based methodologies in curatorial and interactive design practice and use of technology. The ultimate goal of her research is to conceptualize the poetics and politics of interactive media in the representation of traditional knowledge, memory and cultural heritage, and contribute to the ethical use of new media through collaboration. Dr. Kadir previous collaborative research includes the Sq’éwlets: A Stó:lo-Coast Salish community in the Fraser River Valley project, AI-generated Anonymity project, Ethnographic Terminalia multi-media and multi-sited exhibitions, and The Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage Project .
In future projects she plans to collaborate with computer scientists on AI-generated anonymization and reactivate archives using AI, gamification in museum and public spaces, as well as exploring the ethical social impact of AI in surveillance and digital authoritarianism.