Dr Laura Aguiar

Overview

Dr. Laura Aguiar is a multimedia content creator and educator with over 10 years of experience in the education, heritage and arts sectors.

Her practice-based research focuses on making history, art, and heritage more accessible and engaging through participatory creative projects in Northern Ireland. She is particularly interested in participatory approaches to storytelling and community engagement and how this can benefit individuals, organisations, and society on a number of levels (mental health, skills building, resourcing, accessibility, diversity, and community relations).

As a multimedia content creator, Laura has a produced a body of work ranging from documentary films, VR films to interactive websites and exhibitions. As an educator, Laura has delivered 35 community engagement programmes and has published a number of articles and chapters on participatory storytelling over the last 10 years.

Laura is the co-founder and co-director of the Rathmullan Film Festival, a participatory film festival based in a rural village in county Donegal, northwest of Ireland. By actively involving locals from all ages in film programming, event management and filmmaking projects, Laura has helped the festival grow since its first edition in 2018. To date, six festival programmes have been delivered, over 40 films have been made by locals and over five thousand people have visited the festival (in person and virtually), establishing Rathmullan within the Irish film festival circuit.

She holds a BA in Journalism (Fumec University), MA in Media and Communication (Stockholm University), and a PhD in Film Studies (Queen’s University Belfast).