Leila’s principal research interests lie in the field of cultural and historical animation. As an animator of Persian background whose first profession was as a traditional carpet designer, her research interests focus on migration and the evolution of carpet patterns in history, along with the iconological analysis of historical sequential images. 

 

In her Ph.D. (delivered October 2019), she investigated the roots of animation in historical Persian artifacts and related her findings to early optical devices (zoetrope and phenakistoscope). Leila’s current focus extends toward practice-based creative art research in the field of women and gender studies and migrant arts in animation.