About Rusaila

[I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Dr. Rusaila Bazlamit is the founder of Lab Tajribi | Experimental Expressions, a creative research platform dedicated to immersive storytelling, spatial justice, and experimental media. Her work draws on design activism, digital heritage, and diasporic memory to create affective, critical, and participatory experiences. Through video installations, XR environments, speculative cartographies, and experimental interfaces, she explores how design can become a site of resistance, mourning, and reimagination, particularly for displaced and underrepresented communities. Lab Tajribi is rooted in play, care, and critical experimentation across tools, formats, and modes of expression.

Alongside her practice, Rusaila is a lecturer in Digital Design at RMIT University in Naarm (Melbourne), where she teaches and supervises across design, digital media, and spatial storytelling. Her academic research builds on her PhD in design activism and immersive environments to investigate how technologies like VR, game engines, and digital archives can shape more inclusive, ethical, and affective engagements with place and memory. She applies this interdisciplinary lens to both pedagogy and research, working across digital media, experimental museology, and the politics of representation. Rusaila’s work is grounded in her Palestinian and Macedonian heritage and driven by an ongoing commitment to cultural survival and radical imagination.

Please check more about Dr. Rusaila Bazlamit at Linkedin.

 

Qualifications

PhD Design (2019) – Curtin University, Australia

Thesis: “Designing Activist Spatial Experiences Using Mixed-Media Virtual Environments”. Supervisors: Dr Andrew Hutchison, Prof Erik Champion.

M.Sc. Design and Digital Media (2006) – with Distinction – The University of Edinburgh, UK

Thesis: “Nature rePlay: An Interactive Playground”. Supervisors:  Dr Martin Parker, Prof Richard Coyne, Prof John Lee.

B.Sc. Architecture Engineering (2004) – GPA 3.2 out of 4 – Jordan University, Jordan

 

Reviewer

  • Creative Australia, 2025. Currently in the pool of peer reviewers.
  • Australian Council of Art, 2015 –Visual Arts grants, total granted: $1,200,686.
  • Australian Council of Art grants, 2014 – Community Partnerships grants, total granted: $390,378.

 

Academic Honours and Awards

  • Curtin University Postgraduate Scholarship, Curtin University, Australia (2014 – 2017)
  • Curtin Research Scholarship, Curtin University, Australia (2014 – 2017)
  • Postgraduate Scholarship, Jordan University, Jordan (2005 – 2006)
  • Al-Ittihad Schools Scholarship, Al-Ittihad Schools, Jordan (1998-1999)
  • International Visitor Leadership Award – Promoting Tolerance Through the Arts, USA (2009)
  • Three Minute Thesis Finalist, Curtin University (2016)

 

Art Grants and Awards

  • LotteryWest ‘Dream Plan Do’ grant through Community Arts Network (CAN), Western Australia (2019), $18,760. This grant was submitted as a collective I have co-founded called “Palestinian Common Thread”.
  • International Visitor Leadership Award – Promoting Tolerance Through the Arts, USA (2009), all travel expenditure + stipends totalling US$ 4,300. 

 

Professional Memberships

  • Design Research Society, since 2024
  • Australian Institute of Architects, since 2023
  • National Association for the Visual Arts, Australia, since 2017
  • The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Australia, since 2017
  • Arab Society for Computer Aided Architectural Design, since 2007
  • Jordanian Engineers Association, Jordan, since 2004