Professor Sarah Cook Announced as New Programme Director for Arts & Humanities
Published: 25 March 2026
Announcing Professor Sarah Cook as Programme Director at the Centre for Data Science and AI
The Centre for Data Science and AI is delighted to welcome Professor Sarah Cook as Programme Director for the Data Science and AI for Arts and Humanities Programme.
Professor Cook brings a distinctive perspective shaped by her work researching how contemporary artists engage with technology, from early explorations of mobile data and generative systems to current developments in AI. Her curatorial practice has consistently explored humanity’s entanglement with technology, including earlier work on “database imaginaries” and how data structures, machine memory, and algorithmic systems shape the worlds we inhabit. She now sees AI as intensifying these same questions but with greater urgency: bringing underlying data structures into the light, and making visible the labour and resources required to build and sustain them.
At a time when dominant narratives around AI are controlled by capitalist big tech and industrial deployment of engineered solutions to problems that are not yet fully understood, Professor Cook strongly believes in the importance of the Arts and Humanities in creating space for collective questioning, criticality, and public understanding by encouraging nuance, historical grounding, and ethical reflection on AI. Her approach is grounded in public engagement, with research often taking place through exhibitions that generate new insights.
Looking ahead, Professor Cook is positive about Arts and Humanities engagement with the issues the use of AI raises, and is encouraged by the growing community of researchers thoughtfully addressing the pros and cons of innovation in AI across sectors, including the creative industries and cultural heritage organisations.
She also emphasises the importance of creating space for reflection on human agency in relation to technology, and sees the programme as a space that values lived experience alongside technical expertise. She envisions the Centre playing a role in ensuring that technical understandings of AI are complemented by critical, creative, and contextual perspectives across the University.
This work is reflected in her latest curatorial project, AI and the Paradox of Agency, now open and produced by Bildmuseet at Umeå University. The exhibition explores questions of power and control in relation to AI, featuring new commissions by international artists including interactive games, immersive installations, sculptures, and a drone-read hand-painted textile.
The exhibition runs from 13 March 2026 to 17 January 2027.
First published: 25 March 2026
<< News