Dr Soheil Ashrafi is the Academic Programme Director and Assistant Professor of Communications and Media at the Naryn campus. Prior to joining UCA, he was Director of Culture and Communications and Chair of Research and Scholarship at Raffles College of Design and Commerce in Australia, and Associate Colleges in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka. He received his PhD from UNSW Sydney’s School of Art & Design, Australia.
Dr Ashrafi has been a Visiting Research Scholar at the Glasgow School of Art’s School of Innovation and Technology where he works closely with Rural Lab, an interdisciplinary research centre designed to explore the intersections of research, innovation, education and enterprise within rural contexts. He is a Co-founder and Co-chair of the Nomad Festival series at UCA’s Naryn Campus, a platform for knowledge exchange where local narratives, creative practices, and academic research form a transdisciplinary space for dialogue, experimentation, and participation.
Dr Ashrafi is an essayist and occasionally writes for news media on political, social, and cultural issues. He co-edited the book “The Nomadic Image: Explorations at the Intersections of Art, Science and Culture”, University of Melbourne. He has published peer-reviewed papers on hermeneutic phenomenology, aesthetics, design pragmatism, art and cultural expressions. He is an advisor to the Society for Phenomenology and Media (SPM) and a member of the European Society for Aesthetics (ESA).
