Nurul Huda Rashid is a postdoctoral researcher with the Project One Among Zeroes |0100|: Towards an Anthropology of Everyday AI in Islam, at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (CADS) at Leiden University. Her research examines the algorithmic visuality of Muslim women images on global search engines through conjunctures of archive and photo theories, critical gender and race studies, and AI and data studies.

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Nurul Huda Rashid completed her PhD in the Cultural Studies in Asia programme at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Her research examines the algorithmic visuality of Muslim women images on global search engines through conjunctures of archive and photo theories, critical gender and race studies, and AI and data studies. Her dissertation analyses images of Muslim women in the data turn, theorised through an algorithmic visuality that identifies a new mode of image reproduction via algorithmic circulation. This theorisation expands upon visual theory via a new research design of studying the image-as-data which is unpacked through an analysis of Muslim women images from the Google, Baidu, and Yandex search engines. Rooted in her interest in archive and photo theory, Nurul’s research maps the lineage of AI and data from information systems such as libraries and the archives, highlighting the tasks of tagging and indexing as types of annotation that she further develops in participatory action workshops with the Muslim women community. Alongside her work on Muslim women images, Nurul also engages the works of digital feminist artists who utilise technofeminist strategies in art to challenge colonial image datasets. These are framed as a data feminist approach to studying AI and art as tools and practice of decolonising.

Nurul’s academic work is informed by her artistic practice which is anchored in articulations of the female figure in Southeast Asia and the Muslim world through explorations of the image in photography and the colonial archives. Her most recent visual artwork engages with images from archives in the Netherlands, using annotations as sensorial pathways of reclaiming and re-homing. More of her visual artwork can be viewed here. Central to her art practice is the role of collaboration with communities and collectives. She has collaborated on a Nusantara (Malay Archipelago) digital archive in Pulau Something (2021) with cultural workers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan, and co-facilitated a decolonial pedagogical camp titled New Curriculum for Old Questions (2019) with the National University of Singapore Museum.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, Nurul has taught in higher education since 2011 on subjects across fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Liberal Arts, and Visual Arts in Singapore. Her love for the classroom continues in workshop spaces which she nurtured during her time with AWARE, a women’s association in Singapore. There, she co-facilitated and co-developed workshops on sexual education and consent for young girls, photo-storytelling workshops with single-parent families, and workshops on issues of gender violence. Nurul has also designed reading groups on topics related to photography and film.