Current Project — Not Afraid of My Sponsor: Sounding Global Cinema and Migrant Labor in the UAE

Supported by a 2026–27 ACLS Fellowship, this project examines how the United Arab Emirates has emerged as a global media hub through infrastructures shaped by racialized and transnational labor regimes. The UAE’s media economy is rooted in colonial legacies and contemporary digital infrastructures that produce uneven conditions of mobility and recognition within global media production. Focusing on film and media industries in the Gulf, the project traces how studios, free zones, and transnational partnerships connect the UAE to Hollywood and to South and West Asian media industries. Using a sonic methodology, it asks how media infrastructures make some voices and forms of labor more audible and legible than others, while tracing how migrant workers and creators use sound to make a place within, and sometimes challenge, these media worlds.

Stills from the music video “Kafeel” (2019) by Telvaz11