Laila Shereen Sakr (VJ Um Amel)

Laila Shereen Sakr, known by her moniker VJ Um Amel (“Mother of Hope”), is an Egyptian-American digital media theorist and artist. She is an Associate Professor at UC Santa Barbara with affiliations in Art, Feminist Studies, Media Arts and Technology, and the Center for Responsible Machine Learning.

She is the founder of R-Shief, Inc., one of the largest repositories of Arabic-language tweets, known for her predictive analytics of the fall of Qaddafi in Libya in 2011. Her book ‘Arabic Glitch’ (Stanford University Press, 2023) explores algorithmic systems and critical AI, using glitches aesthetically and as metaphor to reveal global disruptions and interconnections. Her work has been shown at venues including SF MoMA, National Gallery of Art in Jordan, and Tahrir Cultural Center in Cairo.