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Profile
College / Department
Teaching areas
Multiplatform media planning; media campaigns; media literacy.
Research areas
Postdigital feminisms; Global South women's media; social media influencers.
Education
PhD, E-research And Social Media, Lancaster University, United Kingdom, 2019
Master, Applied Linguistics, University of Leicester, United Kingdom, 2004
BA, English And Film, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, 1994
Memberships
Gulf Association of Semiotic Studies, GASS, International, GASS promotes the advancement of semiotics in the Gulf States and internationally., August 2023
Contact
Dr. Zoe Hurley
Associate Professor
PhD, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Zoe Hurley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media Communication at the American University of Sharjah. Her work focuses on feminist media studies; global semiotics; social media influencers and creator economies. She has published articles in leading academic journals, including Semiotica; New Media & Society; Social Media + Society; Information, Communication and Society; Feminist Media Studies; and Postdigital Science and Education. She is the founding President of the Gulf Association of Semiotic Studies. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics, United Kingdom, from 2023 – 2024.
Publications
Zoe Hurley. Everyday Gulf Feminisms and Digital Cultures: Practices, Platforms, and Creator Economies.
Zoe Hurley. Understanding Social Media Marketing Managers’ Intermediary Role: A Middle Eastern Case Study, 2025
Zoe Hurley And Adrienne Evans. Digital Mirrors and The Glimmer of Postdigital Feminisms., Postdigital Science And Education, 14 May 2025
Zoe Hurley. A Question of Methods: Victoria Welby and the Significs of the Archive
Rafat Alwazna, Zoe Hurley And Tariq Elyas. Integrating Technology in Translating Laws from and into Arabic: Benefits, Implications and Limitations, International Journal For The Semiotics Of Law - Revue Internationale De Sémiotique Juridique, May 2025
Zoe Hurley. Victoria Welby’s Semiotics, Significs and Gender: Through a Modernist Lens., Semiotica, 22 May 2025
Zoe Hurley. The Digital Gender Nexus: Intersections of Women’s Learning in Socotra, Yemen, Gender And Education
Zoe Hurley. Semiotic Study of the Gaza Conflict on Social Media, International Journal For The Semiotics Of Law - Revue Internationale De Sémiotique Juridique, 29 March 2025
Zoe Hurley, Simone Driessen, Bethan Jones And Benjamin Litherland. Masks of Micro-Celebrity and Fandom: A Semiotic Study of Arab Women's Facial Regimes, 6 March 2025
Zoe Hurley. Generative AI’s Family Portraits of Whiteness: A Postdigital Semiotic Case Study, Postdigital Science And Education, December 2024
Zoe Hurley. Developing Feminist-Decolonial-Capabilities for Emancipatory Pedagogy: A Case of Gulf-Arab Women’s Learner-Positionalities, 2024
Zoe Hurley. Semioethics as an axiology of care for the self-other: A Welbian genealogy, 28 October (4th Quarter/Autumn) 2024
Zoe Hurley And Tariq Elyas. Soundscapes of the Adhan, the Islamic Call-to-Prayer: A Semiotic More-Than-Digital Analysis, Postdigital Science And Education, September 2024
Zoe Hurley. ‘COVID Casablanca’: A case of Dubai’s British social media influencers and postdigital intermedia geographies, New Media & Society, May 2024
Zoe Hurley And Widad Mohammed. Intersectional Feminist Autoethnographic Snaphots of Socotra, Yemen, 2023
Zoe Hurley. Laughable Resistance? The Role of Humour in Middle Eastern Women’s Social Media Empowerment, 2023
Zoe Hurley. Postdigital Cityscapes, 2023
Zoe Hurley. Postdigital Feminisms, 2023
Zoe Hurley. Signs of #self: a Peircean semiotic framework for theorizing self-(re)presentations on Instagram, Visual Communication, November 2023
Zoe Hurley. Schooling in the Playbourer’s Cave, Postdigital Science And Education, October (4th Quarter/Autumn) 2023
Zoe Hurley. What you see is what you hear: creativity and communication in audiovisual texts, Social Semiotics, 8 August 2023
Zoe Hurley. #Dubailiving and Digital Placemaking on TikTok: Migrant, Domestic, and Service Workers’ Affective Social Mediascapes, Social Media + Society, July (3rd Quarter/Summer) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Review of Legacy Russell (2020). Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Postdigital Science And Education, April (2nd Quarter/Spring) 2023
Zoe Hurley And Zeina Hojeij. Coming-of-Age of Teenage Female Arab Gothic Fiction: A Feminist Semiotic Study, Humanities, 14 February 2023
Zoe Hurley. Social Media Influencing in The City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Heuristics of Influence, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Influencer-Genealogy, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Mediatising-Self, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Mobile Migrant Labour, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Orientalist Influence, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Picture Dubai, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Postdigital Cityscape, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Postdigital Visualities, 27 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley And Widad Mohammed. Intersectional Feminist Autoethnographic Snaphots of Socotra, Yemen, 1 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoë Hurley. Arab women’s veiled affordances on Instagram: a feminist semiotic inquiry, Feminist Media Studies, 1 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Zoe Hurley. Feminist Pragmatist Salvaging of Victoria Welby’s Theory of ‘Ident’, 2022
Zoe Hurley And Diana Johnston. Social Media's Gendered Affordances for Mobile Migrant Women in the Arabian Gulf, 22 November 2022
Zoe Hurley. A semiotic analysis of Saudi Arabian women's Instagrammable identities following the campaign for the right to drive, 11 July (3rd Quarter/Summer) 2022
Zoe Hurley. Saving Face: Theorizing Arab Women's Emerging Self-(Re)presentations on Instagram, 27 June 2022
Zoe Hurley. Middle Eastern women influencers’ interdependent/independent subjectification on Tiktok: feminist postdigital transnational inquiry, Information, Communication & Society, 26 April (2nd Quarter/Spring) 2022
Zoe Hurley. Thinking with semiotic-dialogism: Re-orientating augmented reality and visual literacy, Studies In Technology Enhanced Learning, 14 March 2022
Zoe Hurley. Feminist Pragmatist Salvaging of Victoria Welby’s Theory of ‘Ident’, 1 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2022
Zoe Hurley. Freya Stark’s Tales of Travel on the Coast of Incense, 2021
Zoë Hurley And Khadija Al-ali. Feminist Postdigital Inquiry in the Ruins of Pandemic Universities, Postdigital Science And Education, 1 October (4th Quarter/Autumn) 2021
Sarah Pfohl, Bill Ayers, Aaron Turner, A. Goodfreed, Megan Zecchin, Michael Borowski, Kei Ito, Eleni Efeoglou, Robyn Moore, Mark Wittig, Chris Young, Leo Tujak, Anna Thorne, Brooks Fletcher, Eugene Stevenson, Julia Mañero, Ana Maeso-broncano, Jose Mesías-lema, Carlos Escaño, Zoe Hurley, Kami Spear, Noni Brynjolson, June Sanders, Tyson Lewis And Nydia Blas. Simple, Dark, and Deep: Photographic Theorizations of As-Yet Schools, Postdigital Science And Education, 1 October (4th Quarter/Autumn) 2021
Zoe Hurley. TRANSNATIONAL VISUAL INQUIRY: ARAB WOMEN’S INTERDEPENDENT/INDEPENDENT MOVES ON TIKTOK AND INSTAGRAM, Aoir Selected Papers Of Internet Research, 15 September 2021
Zoe Hurley. Dialogic pedagogy and semiotic-dialogic inquiry into visual literacies and augmented reality, Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 23 August 2021
Zoe Hurley. Book Review: Culture & Crisis in the Arab World: Art, Practice and Production in Spaces of Conflict I.B. Tauris, Cultural Sociology, June 2021
Zoe Hurley. #reimagining Arab Women’s Social Media Empowerment and the Postdigital Condition, Social Media + Society, April (2nd Quarter/Spring) 2021
Zoe Hurley. Dialogic theorising of Emirati women’s technology enhanced learning in the United Arab Emirates, Studies In Technology Enhanced Learning, 13 April (2nd Quarter/Spring) 2021
Zoe Hurley. Freya Stark’s Tales of Travel on the Coast of Incense, 1 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2021
Petar Jandrić, Jimmy Jaldemark, Zoe Hurley, Brendan Bartram, Adam Matthews, Michael Jopling, Julia Mañero, Alison Mackenzie, Jones Irwin, Ninette Rothmüller, Benjamin Green, Shane Ralston, Olli Pyyhtinen, Sarah Hayes, Jake Wright, Michael Peters And Marek Tesar. Philosophy of education in a new key: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Education and environment after the coronavirus, Educational Philosophy And Theory, 1 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2021
Zoe Hurley. Postdigital Feminism and Cultural Visual Regimes: Covid-19 at Women’s Only University in the Gulf, Postdigital Science And Education, October (4th Quarter/Autumn) 2020
Zoe Hurley. Review of Richard Horton (2020). The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again, Postdigital Science And Education, October (4th Quarter/Autumn) 2020
Conference Presentations
Scattering and Gathering: The Digitization of Arab Women’s Media Knowledge, Language And The Digitalization Of Knowledge, 21 July 2025
Temporality and Aesthetics of Gulf Social Media Scapes, 35th Annual Gulf Conference, 7 July 2025
Gendered Pedagogies: A Feminist-Multimodal Case Study of Socotra, Yemen, Language, Literacies And The Digitalization Of Education, 19 May 2025
Laughable Resistance: The role of humour in Middle Eastern women influencers’ social/digital capital., Digital Capital And Political Systems: Shaping Inequalities In A Technological Age, 17 April 2025
Semiotics in the Age of Complexity: The Search for Meaning in a World in Crisis., Filosofi(e)semiotiche, The Gulf Association Of Semiotic Studies (gass), Zayed University, And The University Of Teramo., 17 April 2025
The Impact of Social Media and Misinformation on Education and Society., The Impact Of Social Media And Misinformation On Education And Society., February 2025
Generative AI’s Portraits of Whiteness: A Postdigital Semiotic Case Study., Empact + Fifth International Conference On Semiotics Of Culture And Visual Communication, 2024
Relational and Multimodal Higher Education, Relational And Multimodal Higher Education Book Launch, September 2024
Welbian modernism: feminine significs and the media res of meaning., Xxv World Congress Of Philosophy: Philosophy Across Boundaries, August 2024
Social Media Influencers in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition, Public Book Launch, February 2024
Grants and sponsorships
Grant, Faculty Startup Grant 2025 (FSU25), American University of Sharjah, July 2025 - July 2027
