Dr. Sarah E.K. Smith is Assistant Professor in Communication & Media Studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. At Carleton, Dr. Smith is Affiliated Faculty in the Bachelor of Global and International Studies (BGInS), where she is associated with the Specialization in Global Media and Communication. She is also an Affiliate of the ALiGN (Alternative Global Network) Media Lab. Her research addresses visual and material culture, with a focus on modern and contemporary art, as well as exhibitions, museums, and cultural policies. Current projects encompass a range of topics from contemporary video art and artists’ labor unions to the international circulation of exhibitions, curatorial networks, and cultural diplomacy.

Recent publications include contributions to the Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to Visual Culture and the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. In 2016 Dr. Smith published the open-access, online, peer-reviewed monograph General Idea: Life & Work (Art Canada Institute). In 2020, her co-authored article “Unsettling Canadian Heritage: Decolonial Aesthetics in Canadian Video and Performance Art,” which was awarded the prize for the Best Article Published in the Journal of Canadian Studies by the Canadian Studies Network/Réseau d’études canadiennes.

In 2017, Dr. Smith co-founded the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative (NACDI)—a transdisciplinary research network addressing cultural diplomacy that includes academics, policymakers and practitioners from North American and beyond. That same year she provided expert witness testimony to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s study of the impact and utilization of Canadian culture and arts in Canadian foreign policy and diplomacy. Dr. Smith has been a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute since 2018. She is also actively engaged the pedagogy of visual culture as a core team member of the Open Art Histories initiative.

Prior to joining the faculty at Carleton University, Dr. Smith held the 2015 Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. She also held a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs, and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Dr. Smith has experience in the museum sector and was the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.