On this episode of Looks Like New, MEDLab’s Stephanie Abdalla speaks with Dr. Naim Aburaddi, artist, journalist, and PhD graduate whose work explores how immersive tech can document destruction. Aburaddi is the co-founder and co-director of the Phoenix of Gaza XR Project, an interactive virtual reality experience that documents life in Gaza through its culture, history and decades of subjugation by outside powers. It has been exhibited at institutions including MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, and Yale, as well as internationally. Naim is A Data Justice Fellow at Princeton’s Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab and recipient of the 2024 Mellon ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship. His work has been featured by the BBC, WGBH, Colorado Public Radio, and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Their conversation moves from the personal to the political, following Aburaddi’s life growing up in Gaza and pursuing journalism abroad, to how storytelling became both a survival tool and a form of resistance.