Joana Burd is an artist, researcher and professor whose work investigates the entanglements between technology, sensory perception, and embodied experience. Her practice centers on haptic aesthetics, data sonification, and affective design, often employing touch, sound, and interactive media as critical tools for inquiry. She holds a Ph.D. in Advanced Studies in Artistic Productions from the University of Barcelona, awarded cum laude with International Mention. Her doctoral dissertation, Poetics of Vibration: Deployments of Technology in Contact with the Body as Affective Memory, examines how tactile interfaces and sonic environments shape memory, affect, and embodied knowledge.
Since 2018, 
Burd taught sculpture, audiovisual media, and sound art at the University of Barcelona, where she also held a pre-doctoral research fellowship (AGAUR-FI). She has led courses and workshops in Spain, Brazil, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, with visiting research positions at institutions such as University College London (UCL) and the Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology (SBCAST/UCSB). Her international teaching experience reflects a strong commitment to transdisciplinary and practice-based learning. Her research has been presented at leading international conferences such as ISEA (Paris), SAR (Bauhaus), fPET (ZKM), and SiGRaDi (UIC, BCN), and published in journals including Leonardo (MIT Press), Multimodality & Society (SAGE), Adjacent Journal (NYU), as well as in edited volumes by Dykinson (Spain). Her artistic research embraces collaborative methodologies and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and sensory approaches to digital art and pedagogy.
Beyond academia, she also co-founded Acervo Independente, an award-winning cultural space in Porto Alegre Brazil that hosted exhibitions, artist residencies, and educational programs for emerging artists. Her current research interests include the politics of touch, speculative design, affective computing, and multimodal pedagogies. She continues to develop artistic and academic collaborations across Europe and Latin America, contributing to the advancement of inclusive, critical, and experimental practices in art and design education.