Devon Baur

Dr. Devon Baur is a scholar and curator whose career has been dedicated to the interplay of art and technology. Her research focuses on performance, new media, and the senses (with a particular focus on smell). She currently serves as AI Fellow at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television and teaches courses on performance and technology at both UCLA and UCSB.

Baur's first book project, Scent Trails, explores how technology expands (and limits) the human sensorium — examining new artists and cutting-edge tools that push us beyond the audio-visual hierarchy. Her work has been published in Theatre Journal, TDR, and other venues; she is also co-editing Sensory Dramaturgy: Aesthetics for Nervous Systems, along with Elizabeth McQueen and Sean Metzger.

Beyond her scholarship, she also has public-facing praxis through collaborations with technology labs. She has held a five-year residency in Stanford's Electrical Engineering Department (as a researcher and artist-in-residence). During this time, she embarked on interdisciplinary projects that explored multisensory storytelling in virtual spaces. A highlight was her art installation Smell. Print., which had a solo exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles and was curated in a special screening hosted by The Getty and NASA JPL. She also held residencies/fellowships in the Multi-Sensory Devices Group at University College London, and in both the Center for Engineering Media and Performance (REMAP) and the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA.

Prior to this, she worked in the VR/AR industry as both a curator and producer. Most notably, she produced the award-winning Tree VR — touring to over 100 festivals including Cannes, Tribeca, and twice to the World Economic Forum in Davos — and directed the Topanga Film Institute, lauded by the LA Times as one of the coolest film festivals in the world.

She holds three degrees in Theater and Performance Studies: a PhD from UCLA (USA), an MPhil from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and a BA from Aberystwyth University (UK).