N. (Nataliia) Laba, Dr

I am Assistant Professor in Digital and Multimodal Communication / Humane AI in the department of Discourse and Communication.

My research is concerned with visual generative AI, technology adoption and use, and society↔technology relationships. I have a particular interest in sociotechnical imaginaries of visual generative AI and AI-generated images of war and conflict. 

My co-edited book Six Critical Lenses on AI-Generated Images (Routledge, forthcoming in 2026) (re-)imagines relationships between artefacts and media, authorship and agency, creativity and commodification, representation and visual style. Across the chapters, the book examines three realities of AI images, from sociotechnical fabrics, through semiotic interfaces, to representations and aesthetics. 

I have written on AI-generated images and (conflict) representation, sociotechnical imaginaries of visual generative AI, visual AI style, and multimodal co-production with generative AI from critical data studies and communication perspectives.

I am a social media editor of Visual Communication (since 2025) and a student and early career representative for Visual Communication Studies Division at the International Communication Association (2024-2026).

My PhD is in media studies from the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), and my first degree is in philology from Chernivtsi National University (Chernivtsi, Ukraine), where I trained in English and French language and literature.

In addition to my undergraduate and postgraduate teaching engagements in the Communication and Information Studies Program at the Faculty of Arts, I have ten years of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching experience in digital cultures (University of Sydney), visual communication (University of New South Wales), digital and social media (University of Technology Sydney), and organisational communication (Metropolitan University of Hong Kong).