Mary Michael (she/they) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Film and Media Studies department at UCSB. She has a B.S. in Sociology/Law and Society from the University of California, Riverside, and an M.A. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Southern California. Her research examines smart city projects in the Middle East, with particular focus on how migrants engage with paperless and e-governance technologies in Dubai. Her fields of study include migration and labor in the Middle East, histories of media and technology, critical data studies, and bio/necropolitics. Mary is also a self-taught media practitioner who experiments with arts praxis methodologies including 3D model building, game design, and hyperlink narrative writing. She aims to use her Ph.D. to work in migrant advocacy, both broadly and with specific focus on the emergence of new technologies and their impact on migrant life. Her dream is to open an urban planning and design media lab in which migrant and other vulnerable communities can collaborate on building software that is designed to better serve their interests.