Luiza Printes dos Santos
M.F.A. – 3rd Year
Film/Video Production, Digital Culture | Storrs
Hometown: São Paulo, Brazil
UConn location: 119 Bishop Center
Email: luiza.printes_dos_santos@uconn.edu
Website: https://rb.gy/szfynd
M.F.A. – 3rd Year
Assistantship: DMD Teaching Assistant
Education: M.A. in Communications, Penn State University, State College, PA, 2020
B.S. in International Relations Studies, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, 2017
Language(s) Spoken: Português (Portuguese), Deutsch (German) and Español (Spanish)
Area of Research / Artistic Focus: Critical Media, Visual Sociology, Multimedia Installations, Experimental film, Digital Photography
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Luiza Printes dos Santos grew up shadowing her parents through their work and at conferences around the world. At the age of fifteen, she was already a world traveler, with multicultural experiences throughout Asia, North/South America, and Europe. Through the decades, the learnings and encounters she has had from this life abroad started to shape her academic choices, and she developed a critical eye for photography and sociology studies. After graduating with a bachelor’s in international relations studies in Brazil, aiming to work for international organizations or as a journalist, she decided to pursue a Master of Arts in Communications at Penn State University. It was then, as a graduate assistant and researcher for the communications department, that she realized her passion for teaching, as well as for visually creating narratives that can convey knowledge about contemporary philosophy and digital media behaviors. Today, she is focused on the progress of her research which interrogates, through theory and multimedia experiments, our digital behaviors with smartphone photography and its impact on how we are experiencing reality. She truly believes in the intersection between modern philosophy and visual communications as a learning strategy for the digital media field.
Recent Achievements: Public Relations Society of America, PRSA Central PA – Presenter and hosted the webinar: Video in The Digital World, March 2021
Publication: Printes, L. (2020). Digital Moments, Liquid Experiences: A visual analysis of our uses of smartphone photography. Scholarsphere (psu.edu)
3MIN THESIS PRESENTATION AWARD– Penn State competition, Third Place Award, 2018
Industry Experience: Photographer and Videographer freelancer for clients on digital media platforms, ranging from marketing teasers, Reels, Insta-Posts, YouTube interviews, and original short-films.
Fun Fact: I was part of the Royal Academy of Dance in Brazil as a professional Ballerina, and I recently realized I have a serious fashion problem with pants, adding more than 35 pairs in my wardrobe. You will never see me with boring pants!