Dr. Jori Snels (she/her) is a cultural analysis scholar and a lecturer at Leiden University. She earned a joint doctorate PhD (2019-2025) at the University of Amsterdam and Western Sydney University with a dissertation titled Sinofuturism as Worlding: Imagining Futures in Sinophone Digital Art. She is currently developing a research project on how futures of climate change are imagined in digital art from Taiwan and Singapore, with a specific focus on the role of water in worlding temporally entwined futures. Her work has been published in NECSUS, Screen Bodies, World Art, Art and the Public Sphere, and Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis.

More information about Jori Snels

Fields of interest

My research interests span futurism, temporality, digital art, worlding and worldbuilding, climate change, Sinophone studies, blue humanities, island studies, and posthumanism. I ground my cultural analysis approach in methods from art history and ethnography.

Research

I am developing a new research project on how futures of climate change are imagined in digital art from Taiwan and Singapore, with a specific focus on the role of water in worlding temporally entwined futures.

Previously, I earned a joint doctorate PhD (2019-2025) at the University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) and Western Sydney University (Institute for Culture and Society). My dissertation, titled Sinofuturism as Worlding: Imagining Futures in Sinophone Digital Art, examined how Sinophone digital art imagines technology-infused futures in response to techno-utopian and techno-orientalist imaginations of those futures. The study adopts a theoretical framework that consists of three concepts – Sinophone, worlding, and Sinofuturism – which are mobilized to analyze how future-oriented Sinophone digital art brings into being technology-infused futures of Sinophone words. The study focuses on four themes that are prevalent in imaginations of such futures: connectedness, embodiment, self-care, and artificial intelligence. Case studies include artworks by artists such as LuYang, Lawrence Lek, aaajiao, Miao Ying, Li Yi-Fan, Ye Funa, Betty Apple, and Fei Yining, as well as various art exhibitions. My PhD project included a six-month research stay at Western Sydney University as well as fieldwork in China, Taiwan, and Singapore.
 

Grants and awards

My PhD project was funded by the PhDs in the Humanities scholarship by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), alongside additional funding from the Prof. dr. H.W. van Os Fonds Travel Grant and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfondsbeurs grant, amongst others.

Curriculum vitae

I am currently a lecturer at Leiden University, where I teach film and literature analysis and TV studies in the BA program Film and Literary Studies, and supervise theses in both that BA program and in the MA program Film and Photographic Studies. Previously, I taught academic skills at University College Utrecht (Utrecht University) and media philosophy in the BA program Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam.
Prior to my PhD I completed a research master’s degree in Art Sudies (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam and a bachelor’s degree in Language and Culture Studies (major: modern art and culture) at Utrecht University, spending a semester as an exchange student at Free University Berlin.

Selected publications

- Snels, Jori. (2025). “Ugliness as Refusal: Miao Ying, Hardcore Digital Detox.” NECSUS, #Ageing, Autumn. URL: https:⁠/⁠/necsus-ejms.org/ugliness-as-refusal-miao-ying-hardcore-digital-detox/
- Snels, Jori. (2022). “Challenging Binaries in Posthuman Worlds. An Analysis of Lu Yang’s The Great Adventure of Material World.” Screen Bodies, Lu Yang: An Artist in Transformation, 7(1): 79-92. DOI: 10.3167/screen.2022.070105
- Snels, Jori. (2022). “Virtual Connectedness in Times of Crisis. Chinese Online Art Exhibitions during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” World Art, 12(1): 95-118. DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2021.1991465
- Snels, Jori. (2018). “The Politics of Aesthetics, Space, and Community. An Analysis of Same Old, Brand New by Cao Fei.” Art & the Public Sphere, Artistic Practices in Contemporary Asia, 7(1): 63-77. DOI: 10.1386/aps.7.1.63_1
- Snels, Jori. (2017). “Samenwerkingen tussen Verzet en Conformisme.” (‘Between Dissidence and Obedience.’) Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 130 (2): 225–47. DOI: 10.5117/tvgesch2017.2.snel