Assistant Professor of Practice - Emerging Media Arts: Designing Experiences

Description of Work

Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln invites applications for an Assistant Professor of Practice – Emerging Media Arts: Designing Experiences.

We seek a designer, or creative technologist professional whose practice explores human experience across emerging media systems — from spatial experience and interactive design to spatial computing and sensory design. The ideal candidate creates work that merges concept, form, and technology to produce meaningful, participatory, or embodied experiences — whether through games, sound, light, movement, or data-driven interaction. The Designing Experiences faculty encompasses teaching and professional practice that engage sensory design, interactivity, and emergent systems. We are interested in candidates whose work examines how media and technology shape perception, presence, play and participation.

Possible areas of expertise include (but are not limited to):

• Interactive and immersive environments design.
• Spatial computing and interactive systems design.
• Sound, light, and motion as design media.
• Experimental interface design.
• Embodied and participatory experience design.
• AI-driven storytelling, performance, or design.
• Game design.

The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts is an interdisciplinary center and creative research facility within the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film, established with a $57M investment from the Johnny Carson Foundation. Research areas include filmmaking, interactive and immersive storytelling, experience and generative design, XR, machine learning, sonic and data arts, virtual production, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

Key Responsibilities

• Teach courses across interactive systems, spatial experience, and computational or foundational visual practice.
• Lead project-based studios that integrate technology, design, and experimentation.
• Collaborate with colleagues across film, theatre, design, art, graphic design, music, computer science, and architecture.
• Mentor students to develop critical, technical, and creative skills in experiential media.
• Contribute to undergraduate and graduate curriculum development and service at the School and College levels.