Graduate Associate
sanakram[at]yorku.ca
Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Program in Cinema and Media Studies, York University
Research Keywords:
Immersive storytelling and performance; decolonial worlding; media technologies; spatial design and expanded scenography; research-creation; community engagement
Sana Akram is an interdisciplinary media artist, spatial designer and researcher working at the intersection of immersive storytelling and performance, decolonial worldbuilding, and community engagement. Her doctoral research-creation reconceptualizes extended reality, worlding, and technology, in and by way of the Indo-Islamicate Tilismi Dastan storytelling and performance tradition. Approaching media technologies as relationally situated to each of her works has allowed her to build towards a critically informed creative practice spanning interactive/new media documentary, essay film, photography, virtual environment design and immersive mixed reality. She has showcased at several international festivals and exhibitions and published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Her broader research interests lie in co-creation and research-creation; Islamic art, literature, mysticism and the occult sciences; space and place; the urban imaginary and civic engagement.
Sana is a formally trained architect-urbanist and a Fulbright alum, and holds an MS in Design and Urban Ecologies from the Parsons School of Design, The New School. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University, where she received the prestigious Elia Scholars Program Award.