PhD Students

Naomi Angel
Naomi has worked in South Africa, Japan, Australia and Canada as a researcher, producer, journalist and teacher. She holds a BA in Psychology from the University of British Columbia and completed her MA in Media Studies at Concordia University. Her thesis focused on race and representation in the media, highlighting mixed-race representation in film. Her current research focuses on cultural memory and the processes of memorialization.

Melissa Aronczyk
Melissa’s dissertation is about the phenomenon of “nation branding”: the interpenetration of national government and private interests to create and communicate a particular version of national identity in an international marketplace. Research and teaching interests include nationalism and national identity; media criticism; globalization; sociology of culture; advertising and promotional culture; visual culture. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Communication, Invisible Culture, the Toronto Star, Maisonneuve magazine, and the edited volume Practicing Culture, eds. Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett (London: Routledge, 2007). She is a member and coordinator of the NYU-NYLON Culture & Politics research group, and an editor at the Social Science Research Council.

Solon Barocas

Frederico Bertagnoli
Adjunct Instructor, NYU; MA, Interactive Telecommunications, NYU. As a graphic designer, his projects include animation and digital editing for the award-winning shows The Genomic Revolution and Pearls at the American Museum of Natural History. His teaching and research interests include the social history of communication technologies, sociology of culture, and information and communication design.

Jamie Berthe
Jamie is a first-year student in the PhD program whose interests in cinema and visual culture are colored by a strong interest in continental philosophy. Having completed her undergraduate work at the American University of Paris (in Philosophy and Film Studies), Jamie went on to pursue an MA in Cinema Studies at Tisch/NYU. Her doctoral research is likely to revolve around issues of ethics and aesthetics in documentary and ethnographic film, visual epistemology, and the work of French filmmaker/anthropologist Jean Rouch.

Suzanne Collins

Cynthia Conti
MS, Comparative Media Studies, MIT; BA, Communications and Culture, Screen Studies, Clark University. Cynthia’s research focuses on the microradio movement, radio history and broadcast regulations. Before entering the Ph.D. program, she taught courses in video production, communications and media studies at several schools and colleges in the Boston area.

Gabriele Cosentino
Research interests include media and democracy, public media, and intellectual property. He holds a Laurea degree in Communication Science from the University of Bologna, Italy. He is part of d-i-n-a, a network of artists and researchers developing events and projects in the field of art, technology, and activism. He’s currently teaching at the NYU Florence campus.

Marco Deseriis

Hatim El-Hibri
BA, Psychology, Rutgers University; MA, Culture & Communication, NYU Hatim is interested in visual cultures of post-colonial situations, and other forms of inter/disconnectedness. He is also broadly interested in pop cultures, visual technologies, cultural geography, and especially systems and representations of cultural and physical boundaries/edges. He has previously worked in advertising in the Middle East, and briefly in film. He remains fascinated by flights of imagination.

May Farah
May is a first-year PhD candidate in the Department of Culture and Communication at NYU. After completing a BA in Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and an MA in Sociology at the American University in Beirut, May was a Beirut-based journalist for over a decade. Her exposure to a number of issues while living and working in Beirut have carried over to her current research interests, which include media (mis)representations of the Lebanese group Hizbullah, Palestinian use of graffiti as sites of resistance, and the impact of media identity construction among Palestinian youth living in refugee camps in Beirut.

Travis Hall

Thomas Harkins
Thomas Edward Harkins, AAS, BS, MA. Sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Media Ecology Program. Adjunct Instructor, NYU. Thomas teaches "Speech Communication" and, at times, "Public Speaking." His academic interests are in the area of Education and Technology. He is particularly interested in the manner in which evolving communication technologies influence human interactions. His proposal is focused specifically on the influence of evolving classroom technologies on Writing Instruction - the manner in which writing is taught in public school classrooms in NYC.

Samuel Howard-Spink
A Londoner by birth, Sam Howard-Spink has been a journalist for 13 years in the U.K., Asia and the U.S., with much of that time spent covering the international music industry. He has written for Music Week, Music Business International, The Guerrilla Guide to the Music Industry, The South China Morning Post, IBM Think Research and openDemocracy, and recently co-authored an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. His research interests are Intellectual Property, the "copyfight" social movement, and global digital communications policy. Sam is also a hiphop/scratch DJ, an international Ultimate frisbee player and an unashamed Star Wars geek.

Julie Jakolat

Robert Jones
Robert earned an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from San Diego State University and a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Indiana University. His dissertation explores the videogame subculture of Machinima, the use of video game technologies by gamers to create animated films. As an instance of fan-produced media, Machinima offers an insight into the new ways that gamers perform culture. He is also interested in how the videogame medium is currently being utilized as a means of political activism. His work has appeared in the journal Popular Communication as well as the edited volumes Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet and Media Literacy: A Reader. In addition to teaching at NYU he also teaches a course on Videogame Culture at the New School. His website covers issues in the gaming world and reviews machinima films. He is a musician, digital filmmaker, life-long gamer, and T-shirt junkie.

Carolyn Lee Kane
Carolyn Lee Kane is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her research areas include New Media, Critical Theory, and Aesthetic Philosophy. Previous degrees include an MA in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research (NYC, 2005); BFA in New Media from Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada, 2003); and a BA in English Literature from the University of Vermont (2002).

Marissa Kantor Dennis
Marissa is a second-year student in the PhD program. Her background is in cultural studies and cultural competency in mental health. She spent several years in Latin America studying cross-cultural issues in mental health and sexuality. Currently, Marissa's focus is on the performativity of illegal bodies--that is, bodies that for different social, historical, political and cultural reasons are not "allowed" to exist. She is specifically looking at the cultural experience of undocumented Latino residents in New York. Marissa is a trained medical interpreter and hopes to conduct a project on the interpersonal communicative practices between doctor, patient, and interpreter. She really likes the word "borderlands" even though it seems to be on its way out.

Tilottama Karlekar

Gerald Leboff

Kevin Maness
Instructor of Communication Studies, Eastern University (St. Davids, PA); Doctoral Candidate, Media Ecology, NYU; MA, English, University of Pennsylvania; BA, English and Education, Eastern University. Kevin is currently working on his dissertation, entitled, "Teaching Media Teachers: Media Education and the Teachers' College." Kevin focuses his scholarly attention on media education and the relationship between mass media and young people. In addition, he is interested in consumer culture and the many intersections between religious faith (particularly Christianity) and popular culture. He teaches a wide array of courses, covering topics from public speaking to representation of race, class, and gender. When he's not teaching or avoiding dissertation research, Kevin also works as a Residence Hall Director in Bryn Mawr, PA.

Alice Marwick
Alice is a second-year PhD candidate in the Department of Culture and Communication at NYU. Her research areas include social computing, online identity, participatory culture and the impact of commercial internet spaces on user practice. She has a MA from the University of Washington in Communication and a BA from Wellesley College in Women's Studies and Political Science. Alice has worked in the technology industry since 1995 as a project manager, product planner and internet strategist.

Paul Melton
Paul's research interests focus on culture and consumption – the ways in which culture is consumed, the ways in which consumption becomes culture, and, particularly, the technologies that mediate cultural production and consumption. Before pursuing his PhD, Paul spent 10 years working in communications across five countries and several industries, including information technology, telecommunications, and international development. Paul holds undergraduate degrees in mathematics (thesis " Applications of Moving Mesh Methods to 2D Orthogonal Grid Generation") and Spanish literature (theses "Vispera del gozo: Hacia una lectura posmoderna / posfeminista de la vanguardia española," and "Amores de segunda mano: Disidencia sexual/textual en los cuentos de Enrique Serna"), with honors in both.

Nadja Millner-Larsen

Wazhmah Osman

David Parisi

William Phillips

Devon Powers
student profile

Joseph Reagle
Joseph Reagle is a Doctoral Fellow at NYU's Culture and Communication Department where he studies collaberative cultures, including the Wikipedia. For seven years he was a Research Engineer at the MIT Lab for Computer Science where he has served as a Working Group Chair and Author within the joint IETF/W3C XML Signature, XML Encryption and Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) activities. Additionally, he has worked as a Policy Analyst addressing privacy, content-selection/free-speech, and intellectual rights, including the development and maintenance of W3C's privacy and intellectual rights policies (i.e., copyright/trademark licenses and patent analysis).

MJ Robinson
MA, Cinema Studies, NYU; MA English Literature/Literary Theory, Loyola Marymount Univeristy; BA Communications Arts/Film Production, LMU; BA English Literature, LMU MJ Robinson is currently finishing her dissertation entitled "Voice of the City: The Rise and Fall of WNYC-TV," a cultural and regulatory history of WNYC-TV/Channel 31, the City owned and operated television station which operated as part of the Municipal Broadcasting System from 1961-1996. Among her other research interests are advertising, the history of the film and television industries, and globalization, in particular the current trends in international co-productions. In additional to teaching at NYU, she works as a film archivist for the City of New York, preserving and making accessible the WNYC-TV film collection for use by researchers and documentarians. She is also the New York representative of a German company which invents in "Law & Order," "L&O: SVU" and "L&O Criminal Intent" and monitors production on these three series. She currently teaches courses in the history of the film industry, advertising and a summer course in media and globalization class which is taught in conjunction with the University of Amsterdam.

Magdalena Sabat
Magdalena is a first year PhD student at NYU. She is a graduate of University of Toronto (BA) and University of Amsterdam (MA). She was born in Poland, but also lived in Canada, The Netherlands and France. Her research interests include feminism, sexuality, the body, discourse analysis, visual theory, aesthetics and urban spaces. She is a visual artist with a strong interest in art theory and museology. Magdalena has worked in various fields: teaching, gallery, editing, research and translation. In her spare time she is learning French and writing a short story book.

Jessica Shimmin

Sarah Stonbely
Sarah is a first-year PhD student whose research interests include the sociology of news and political communication. Sarah studied sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Lin Sun
Doctoral Candidate; Teaching Assistant, Graphic Communication Management & Technology, New York University; MS, Educational Technology, Lehigh University; BA, Journalism & Communication, University of International Relations, Beijing, China. Lin Sun is currently working on her proposed dissertation entitled, "Effects of Cognitive Apprenticeship-based Learning-as-Design on undergraduate and graduate media students' creative thinking, metacognitive strategies and knowledge in desktop publishing." Lin's research interests include the cognitive and metacognitive development in multimedia learning-by- design, the development of creative thinking ability in designing hypermedia-based knowledge artifacts, and pedagogical strategies to enhance project-based learning outcome. Lin practices in the design, developing and teaching of interactive and streaming web media for technological education. Lin Sun has taught courses in web development and desktop publishing in the program of Graphic Communication Management & Technology at NYU. web site

Rachelle Sussman

Marion Wrenn
Marion Wrenn earned an MA in English Literature from Rutgers University and an MA in Cinema Studies at NYU. She is currently working on her dissertation: Inventing Warriors: US Philanthropies and the Post-War Reorientation of Foreign Journalists. Her work has appeared in Gamers: Writers, Artists & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels (Soft Skull Press 2004) and is forthcoming in Practicing Culture (Richard Sennett and Craig Calhoun, editors). She grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, where she worked in advertising and as an antiquarian bookseller before returning to graduate school. She is currently a faculty member in NYU's Expository Writing Program and editor of the literary magazine Painted Bride Quarterly (pbq.rutgers.edu), for which she has received several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. A much wittier bio is available online. Google her.