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Photograph of Maya Livio

Maya Livio Assistant Professor SOC | FMA | Film and Media Arts

Contact
Maya Livio
SOC | Film & Media Arts
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW 240
McKinley Building
Additional Positions at AU
Director, Center for Environmental Filmmaking
CTRL Greenberg Faculty Fellow, 2023–2025
Degrees
PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder
MA, University of Amsterdam
BA, University of Maryland

Bio
Dr. Maya Livio is a faculty member at American University's School of Communication (SOC) and the SOC doctoral program as well as the incoming director of the Center for Environmental Filmmaking (2026).

Her interdisciplinary research and practice examine the environmental dimensions of media and computation technologies. Currently, she is working on multiple projects on the environmental stakes of AI systems. The first develops long-term research on the lesser-known impacts of AI-driven data center development. The second is a project on the relationships between AI and biodiversity loss.

Livio has held major fellowships and residencies including at Caltech and the Huntington Library (2023) and the MAK Center for Art & Architecture and SOM Foundation (2024). Her work has been published by and featured in leading journals and venues such as New Media & Society, CHI, e-flux Journal, The Washington Post, NPR, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and books from Amherst College Press and Punctum Books.

Blending traditional research with practice and public scholarship, Livio's work includes scholarly writing, media projects, essayistic writing, curation, and community organizing. This has, for example, included work as curator of MediaLive, an international biennial exhibition of media arts at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), and as curator of the Media Archaeology Lab, a collecting institution for historical technologies. Previously, she has served as Editor at the European Journalism Center and Editor at the international research consultancy Ecorys, advising on projects for the European Commission.

Information for prospective graduate students:

Dr. Livio is currently accepting PhD students. She is particularly well-suited to work with students whose areas of inquiry draw from new/digital media studies; environmental media studies; feminist science and technology studies (fSTS); ecocinema and media arts; critical AI, data, and infrastructure studies;  environmental humanities; human-computer interaction (HCI); game studies; media archaeology, and the history of technology. Dr. Livio can support students whose methods are qualitative, ethnographic, digital methods-driven, practice-based, design-informed, or speculative.

If you are interested in working together as a graduate student, please send an email including a few paragraphs outlining the research questions, case studies, or goals animating your work. Students with an interest in the relationships between media/computation and environmental/multispecies justice are particularly encouraged to reach out.
For the Media
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Teaching

Spring 2026

  • COMM-105 Visual Literacy

Fall 2026

  • COMM-496 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: AI/Media/Futures We Can Shape