Autism Media Lab

Judy Mark

Faculty Member of Disability Studies, UCLA

Judy Mark is currently a UCLA Disability Studies faculty member and teaches undergraduate courses on autism and neurodiversity. Judy received her B.A. in Communications Studies from UCLA and her M.A. in Public Policy from the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.  She is the founder and President of Disability Voices United, a statewide advocacy organization fighting for the rights of individuals with developmental disabilities. She helped lead the successful effort to enact California’s self-determination law and advocates for inclusion in education, employment, and community life. She has spoken extensively throughout California and trained thousands of individuals and families about disability rights issues. Judy’s past professional experience includes over 30 years with national policy organizations, most extensively focusing on immigrant and refugee rights. Judy lives in LA with her husband and 22-year old son with autism, and visits her 19-year old daughter often in New York at Barnard College at Columbia University.

Sjoerd Oostrik

Assistant Professor of Documentary Filmmaking, UCLA

Sjoerd Oostrik is a Dutch documentary filmmaker based between Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Sjoerd received his MA in history at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen before moving on to study Documentary Directing at the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam. With his graduation film Destiny he won the Wildcard Award of the Dutch Film Fund for the most promising graduating documentary director. He directed several short- and medium-length documentaries that screened at internationally renowned festivals like Locarno Film Festival, IDFA, FESPACO, Sao Paulo ISFF, and Dokfest München. In 2014 he won the Media Fund Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) for his latest project A Quiet Place.

In addition to his work as a director, Sjoerd is an adjunct assistant professor in documentary filmmaking at UCLA, a grant advisor for the Dutch Media Fund, and a guest lecturer at the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam.

Jingqui Guan

PhD Candidate in Culture and Performance, UCLA

Jingqiu Guan grew up in Chengdu, China, where her love for dance was first ignited through the study of Chinese folk and classical dance. Her later exposure to modern dance and ballet allowed her to discover that dancing had become her way of life.  Currently, Jingqiu is pursuing a doctoral degree in Culture and Performance at the Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance at UCLA. Her research explores the development of dance film in China and how these works engage with China’s social and cultural transformation in the recent three decades. Her dance film works have appeared in a number of screen dance festivals in the US, China, Hong Kong, and Scotland. Jingqiu has also earned a BA in Economics and French from Saint Mary’s College, a Master’s Degree in International Education Policy from Harvard University, and an MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa.