PhD Students and their Research

PhDs: Update Your Information

John Anderson | jander26@illinois.edu
Anderson (ABD) is one of the nation's experts on the fields of digital radio and pirate broadcasting. Before arriving at the Institute in 2004, Anderson spent seven years as a radio journalist and seven years reporting on the U.S. microradio movement; his "research notes," among other things, can be found at DIYmedia.net. He was instrumental in the launch of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center's low-power FM station (WRFU) and now volunteers his time in multiple capacities with community radio station WEFT. Anderson has a master's degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor's degree with honors in broadcast journalism and humanities from Valparaiso University.
Proposed Dissertation: Radio's Digital Dilemma: Broadcasting in the 21st Century
Adviser: John Nerone

 

Sayuri Arai | sarai2@illinois.edu
Arai received her B.A. in English literature from Aichi Shukutoku University in Japan and her M.A. in communication from the University of New Mexico. Her master's thesis explored how Japanese sojourners in the United States, within a broad context of pro-white and anti-black ideologies, negotiate their sense of racial identity. For the paper she derived from the thesis, she earned the Top Debut Paper Award, presented by the Executives Club at the WSCA annual convention in 2006. Before entering the ICR, Sayuri worked in Tokyo for an international nongovernmental organization, IMADR, devoted to eliminating discrimination and racism worldwide. She conducted research on minority women, including the Ainu, Burakumin and Korean residents in Japan. These research experiences motivated her to continue studying intercultural communication with an emphasis on race, power and identity and to extend her interest to related areas, including postcolonialism, whiteness studies, critical cultural studies and media studies.

 

Christina Ceisel | cceisel2@illinois.edu

 

Wenrui Chen | chenwenrui@gmail.com
Chen has her B.A. in Chinese language and literature and an M.A. in comparative literature from Sun Yat-sen University in China. Her graduate program focused on women's studies and culture theories. She also worked for several programs for gender equality and media advocacy in Guangzhou during her M.A. years, such as the Global Monitoring Project in 2005, the first performance of "Vagina Monologues" in China, and a media training program for local journalists. Then she worked as an English teacher after graduation and an editor for a Chinese newspaper in Guangzhou before she came to the ICR. She is interested in studying culture theories, media theories and the media practices in the Chinese context with gender perspectives.

 

Catherine Coleman | cacolema@illinois.edu
Coleman entered the Institute of Communications Research with bachelor's degrees in English and psychology with honors from the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. Her work experience includes conducting research for a political polling and consulting firm in Washington, D.C., working as an independent marketing consultant and as a marketing analyst for a General Electric subsidiary that was releasing an Internet content delivery network, and advertising with TMP Worldwide. Coleman's research interests include advertising ethics and ethical considerations in advertising regulation — from within the industry and by government — with special attention to how these issues relate to visual persuasion and gender.

 

Matt Crain | mattcrain1@yahoo.com
Crain's research centers on political and cultural economies of media and communications with a focus on the Internet and emerging technologies. Matt holds a master's degree in new media studies from DePaul University and a bachelor's degree in multimedia from Bradley University.

 

Ian Davis | iandavis@illinois.edu

 

Theodore Davis | tdavis23@uiuc.edu

 

Kevin Dolan | kdolan@uiuc.edu
Dolan received a B.A. in English literature at Montana State University at Bozeman and an M.A. in American studies from the University of New Mexico. He worked as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers for 16 years, the last nine as a copy editor and designer at The Santa Fe New Mexican. His research interests include critical whiteness studies, cultural and critical studies, and race and ethnic studies, and more specifically, the way the news media protect and bolster the status quo, particularly what he calls the "incumbency of whiteness." He has presented papers at the Crossroads in Cultural Studies 2004 conference and the 2006 ICA conference in Dresden, Germany. He has an article published in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 6(3): 379-396, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Vol. 28).
Prospective dissertation title: Whiteness and News: The Interlocking Social Construction of 'Realities'"
Adviser: John Nerone

 

Matthew Doolittle | mdoolitt@uiuc.edu
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, Doolittle is a student in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program at the ICR and the College of Medicine. His research focuses on the relationship between the use of language and the survival of physical pain. Through an examination of medical and nonmedical sources, he is examining a broader range of language strategies than have previously been acknowledged by either medical or nonmedical researchers in this area. His work is conceptualizing not only psycho-cultural but also neurological roles for such exercises of language in the mitigation of painful experience. During his graduate program, he also has pursued several projects related to the uses of narrative in the understanding and treatment of trauma, and in 1998 he was invited by the state of Kuwait to observe the comprehensive and ongoing trauma treatment program established after the 1991 Gulf War. From 1995 to 1998, Doolittle held a University of Illinois Distinguished Fellowship in Communications Research. In 1999 he held a Bloomfield Fellowship at the College of Medicine. Recently he received the Diane Gottheil Fellowship for "an outstanding M.D./Ph.D. student entering the final year of the program."

 

Steven Doran | steven.edward.doran@gmail.com
Doran has research interests in communications technologies, new media, online culture and queer theory. Steven completed his B.A. in psychology at the University of Calgary in 2003 and his M.A. in humanities at York University in Toronto in 2005. His previous work looked at constructions of self in gay men's narratives of coming out. Doran recently purchased an iPhone and named it Dan; no, you can't touch it.

 

Mariana Goya Martinez | mgoyam2@uiuc.edu
Martinez has focused her research interests on the influence of new media technologies on human thinking, human behavior and socialization, as well as the ideologies behind their invention and design. Her work concentrates on the effects of hypertext on academic writing, the motivations of human emulation in artificial intelligence, and the benefits of blog writing in adolescent users. She received an M.A. in communication research from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a B.A. in communication from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico. She is a recipient of a graduate scholarship from the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT).

 

Dong Han | donghan@uiuc.edu
Han's general research interests include media commercialization, media and technology, and Chinese media studies. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Beijing Foreign Studies University and a law degree from Peking University (Beijing University). Before entering the ICR, he worked as a legal consultant for China Central Television, dealing with international legal issues and copyright management.

 

Amy Hasinoff | ahasino2@uiuc.edu

Amy Adele Hasinoff Hasinoff received her BA from McGill University. She is a doctoral fellow funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture. Her published work has appeared in Critical Studies in Media Communication and Feminist Media Studies. Her dissertation examines the journalistic, legal, and legislative responses to adolescent girls' sexual self-expression online (such as "sexting"). For more information, visit: www.amyhasinoff.com
Advisors: Sarah Projansky and Paula Treichler

 

David Haskell | haskell2@uiuc.edu

 

Kevin Healey | khealey2@uiuc.edu
Healey earned an M.A. in media studies from New School University (2005) and a B.A. in sociology and women's studies from Drew University (1996). Before coming to the ICR, Healey spent six years doing Web site technical production for a variety of organizations in the New York City area, from music entertainment (Bertelsmann, MTV) to nonprofit (Fund for the City of New York, March of Dimes). His master's work focused on 9/11, the war on terrorism, the Iraq war and the Bush administration. His more recent work focuses on media and religious identity in American culture, with a particular concern for the media strategies of progressive religious organizations. Healey also is an amateur singer/songwriter with an interest in the relationship between music and social change (especially jazz and protest music). He keeps a blog and an archive of his writing and songs at www.khealey.com.

 

Yu Hong | yuhong@uiuc.edu
Prospective dissertation title: "Class Formation in High-Tech Information and Communications as an Aspect of China's Reintegration Into Transnational Capitalism"
Adviser: Dan Schiller

 

Camille Johnson-Yale | ckjohnsn@uiuc.edu
Johnson-Yale received her B.S. in telecommunications from Ohio University and an M.A. in communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago. With more than a decade's experience working in commercial radio, television and film production, her research interests include media industries, new media technologies, theories of space and cultural production, and mediated discourses of globalization. Her publications include a forthcoming article in the Journal of Popular Culture titled, "West by Northwest: The politics of place in Ang Lee's 'Brokeback Mountain,' " as well as a co-authored chapter with Andrea Press in P. Goldstein & J. Machor's forthcoming collection, "American Reception Study" (Oxford University Press). Johnson-Yale was named one of the New Voices in Critical and Cultural Studies by the National Communication Association in 2006. Prospective dissertation title: "'Runaway Film Production': The Discursive Construction of Spaces of Cultural Production by the U.S. Film Industry, 1949-2007"
Adviser: John Nerone

 

Andrew Kennis | akennis2@uiuc.edu
Kennis holds an M.A. degree in political science, with a specialization in comparative politics. His dissertation focuses on applying the propaganda and indexing models toward coverage of the Iraq war, immigration into the U.S., and oppositional social movements to official U.S. policy. As a research assistant, he has been investigating open standards policy adoption and their societal impact. Besides having taught as an adjunct professor in Mexico City, San Francisco and New York, Kennis also worked as a freelance investigative journalist reporting from a variety of locations including Venezuela, Chiapas, Guatemala, Quebec, Palestine, Israel and Taiwan. Most recently, Kennis reported from Venezuela, where he traveled to five cities and interviewed dozens of people about how the political changes in Venezuela have impacted their lives.

 

Owen Kulemeka | okuleme2@uiuc.edu
Kulemeka received a B.A. in English and an M.A. in communication, both from the University of Maryland. His work experience includes public relations and marketing positions at US Airways, Amnesty International, the American Insurance Association, the United Nations, the O.E.C.D, Cassidy & Associates/Weber Shandwick Government Relations, and Kearney & Company. His research interests include the role of public relations and advertising in helping communities recover after a disaster. Owen's Web site can be found at: www.owendk.com.

 

Wanju (Alice) Liao | wliao3@uiuc.edu
Liao earned her bachelor's degree in English from National Taiwan University and her master's in Film Studies from Boston University. Her coursework at Boston University placed an emphasis on the relationship between film and society. Her status as a Taiwan national who has been educated in the West puts her in a privileged position from which to relate the history of Taiwanese cinema to Western/American and Asian discourses. From her new global perspective, this position enables her to recontextualize the Chinese cinema with which she grew up. She is focused on questions concerning how the theory and the object mutually transform one another and how cinematic studies of Chinese culture may contribute to contemporary Western views on the subject of film/media and the society. She will make inquiries on subjects such as film and media theory in modern Western society, comparative cultural codes in modern Western and Chinese context, cinematic representation of culture with gender and queer discourses, and how studies on Chinese cinema may help transcend current film ad media theories. Her academic interests also include film theory, auteurism, independent film, gender and sexuality studies.

 

Sascha Meinrath | sascha@ucimc.org
Meinrath is a Telecommunications Fellow in the ICR, where he is finishing his Ph.D. on community empowerment and the impacts and interactions of participatory media, wireless communication, and emergent technologies. He has been described as a "community Internet pioneer" and an "entrepreneurial visionary" and is a well-known expert on community wireless networks and municipal broadband. Leading news sources, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Nation, and National Public Radio, often cite Meinrath's work in covering issues related to CWNs. Meinrath is the research director for the New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program. He also coordinates the Open Source Wireless Coalition, a global partnership of open source wireless integrators, researchers, implementors and companies dedicated to the development of open source, interoperable, low-cost wireless technologies. He is a regular contributor to MuniWireless.com, the leading source for municipal wireless news and information, and a regular contributor to Government Technology's Digital Communities, the online portal and comprehensive information resource for the public sector. He also has worked with Free Press, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, the Acorn Active Media Foundation, the Ethos Group and the CUWiN Foundation. Meinrath, along with ICR student Victor Pickard, earned the Top Student Paper Award for the Law & Policy division of the International Communications Association. "The New Network Neutrality: Criteria for Internet Freedom" also received a writing competition award from the Access to Knowledge Conference sponsored by the Yale Law School's Information Society Project, and was published in the autumn issue of the International Journal of Communication Law and Policy. He holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a master's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in psychology.

 

Robert Mejia | robmej127@yahoo.com
Mejia's research interests are eclectic, but he says he'd like to believe they are grounded in a philosophy of liberation. Understandably, this "liberatory practice" is not transcendental by any means, and if unchecked, contains the potential to become as destructive as other so-called "freedom" movements (i.e., benevolent patriarchy, Operation Iraqi Freedom, etc.). As such, he is extremely indebted to those who ground him when his post-modern mind disappears into the clouds; additionally, he is grateful to Aunnie, his partner, and others who often are a source of inspiration for the work that he does.

 

Aisha Talé Mitchell | amitche4@uiuc.edu
Mitchell earned a B.F.A. in visual communications (magna cum laude) and an M.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in advertising. Her work experience includes more than 10 years in visual arts and graphic design. Her research interests include media studies as it relates to advertising and consumer behavior in connection with persuasion and influence on race, body image, product placement and purchases.

 

Ellen Elizabeth Moore | emoo@uiuc.edu
Moore received her B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in physical anthropology, with a focus in human osteology. She continued her education with a master's degree in forensic anthropology and advanced human osteology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, one of the first centers for modern forensic anthropology in the country. She conducted archaeological investigations of Native American sites in northern California before taking a job with the U.S. Department of Defense at Hickam Air Force Base in Oahu, Hawaii, from 2000-2003. The position involved traveling to countries in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand), conducting archaeological investigations to recover the remains of U.S. service members who did not return from the Vietnam conflict, and conducting osteological analyses back in the lab to identify the remains for family members. Moore has been a graduate student and research assistant in the ICR since 2003. Her dissertation focus is religion and media, specifically, how churches use secular media and popular culture and what impact this has on religious practices and identity.

 

Molly Niesen | mniesen@uiuc.edu

 

Sangdo Oh | sangoh@uiuc.edu

 

Veronica Pomata | vpomata2@uiuc.edu

 

Richard Potter | rpotter2@uiuc.edu

 

Maritza Quinones-Rivera | qunnsrvr@uiuc.edu
Quinones-Rivera's research interests are in media representations of otherness in mainstream media and popular culture; media roles on diasporic cultures in the U.S., Latin America, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean; popular culture; ethnic identities; and gender. Quinones-Rivera is a recipient of the University of Illinois Summer Predoctoral Program (2003) and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (2004/2005). Before coming to Illinois, she held a professional position as communications manager (1999-2003) for the Office of the Vice President for Student Development and Diversity at Indiana University. In addition, she held the position of assistant executive director (1994-1999) for a historical African-American organization of nine fraternities and sororities, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc., also at Indiana University. Currently she is a board member for the alumni association at Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science (2002-present). She is also a student member of the National Communication Association, the Afro-Latin/American Research Association, the Latin American Studies Association and the Cultural Studies Association.

 

Claudia Quintero Ulloa | uquinter@uiuc.edu
Born in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, Quintero-Ulloa earned a bachelor's degree in communication from the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (1993). In 1994, she studied for a master's degree in Hispanic letters with a major in socio-critics at the Universite Paul Valery in Montpellier, France. In 2003 she obtained a master's degree in sciences with a major in communication from the Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey, at the Monterrey, Mexico, campus. From 1996 to 2003, she taught several undergraduate courses at the Guadalajara, Mexico, campus of ITESM. In the field of communication research, she started studying the telenovela in 1998 using a content analysis approach. In her master's thesis, she examined the telenovela's narrative structure following Vladimir Propp's analysis of the fairytale's character functions. She has presented several conference papers on the topic of the telenovela. She worked as researcher and fieldwork coordinator in the study, "Television and Everyday Life in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey," sponsored by Televisa, and part of her research included audience analysis. She is the recipient of a scholarship for doctoral study in the United States from the National Council of Science and Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, CONACYT), a Mexican governmental institution. In Summer 2004, she was the recipient of a Tinker field research grant for graduate student research in Latin America and Iberia. Her research interests include media and cultural studies, with an analytical framework grounded in folklore, history and anthropology.

 

Carolyn Randolph | crandol2@uiuc.edu

 

Sarah Rasmusson | srasmus3@uiuc.edu
Rasmusson is a visiting assistant professor of Women's and Gender Studies at The College of New Jersey. Formerly a beat reporter in New York City for the alternative press such as The Freedom Forum/First Amendment Center, Women's E-News, the Amsterdam News and The Blade, she has written articles for a number of publications including Bitch, The Village Voice, Women's Review of Books and The New York Times. She recently contributed to an anthology on abortion politics, "No Easy Choice" (Rutgers, 2008) and to the Encyclopedia of Girls Culture (Greenwood, 2008). She holds degrees from Boston University and New York University and has also studied at Harvard University, Oxford Universit, and Charles University in Prague. Her research interests include new cultural feminisms and gendered-critical whiteness studies.

 

Dennis Redmond | redmond2@uiuc.edu

 

Michelle Rivera | mmrivera@uiuc.edu

 

Celiany Rivera Velazquez | ycrivera@uiuc.edu
An art and media events producer, Rivera Velazquez came to the ICR with a B.A. in mass communications from the University of Puerto Rico. Combining her research interests in cinema and queer studies, she completed an honors thesis titled, "Those dammed/gorgeous drags: a new discussion of transgenders in contemporary cinema." While living in Puerto Rico, she produced the renowned art expositions, Universal Publics in Search of Sensorial Interventions (P.U.B.I.S., Spanish acronym) and worked as the assistant producer of the documentary film, "KZ," a piece that narrates the experiences of the Puerto Rican veterans in the Vietnam War. She also worked at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control in Georgia, while completing an internship with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. She is also an alumna of the University of Illinois-sponsored Summer Research Opportunity Program (2001) and the Summer Predoctoral Institute (2002). Her current research advocates for constructive media inclusivity of a wide spectrum of GLBT identities. For her dissertation project, she is seeking to create a visual multimedia piece in which queer voices can find a space to respond and demystify their existent media representations.
Prospective dissertation title: "Embodying Multimedia: Cuban Las Krudas, Feminist Cultural Resistance, and Spanish Caribbean Practices of Sight and Sound"
Adviser: Norman Denzin

 

James Salvo

 

Rob Sloane | rsloane@uiuc.edu
After receiving a B.A. in English literature, Sloane went to work for a small documentary film production company in Washington, D.C. Over the course of two years there, he held a number of different positions, including production assistant, associate producer and researcher/writer and ultimately garnered credits on three films (related to Edgar Allan Poe, the Fourth Amendment, and the National Cathedral) that aired nationally on PBS. When he returned to graduate school, he pursued his interests in the study and analysis of popular culture, earning an M.A. in American culture studies and writing a thesis on popular music. Currently he is writing his dissertation on the economics and culture of an independent record store. He has published two articles in book anthologies about television and media studies. His research interests include popular music, cultural/media studies, aesthetics and taste, and the relationship between mass media and democracy.
Prospective dissertation title: "Accounting and Taste: Economics and Culture in an Independent Record Store"
Adviser: Cameron McCarthy

 

Gerardo Villalabos Romo/ | rvillalo@uiuc.edu

 

Myra Washington | mwashin4@uiuc.edu

 

J. Jenny Yang | jyang36@uiuc.edu
Yang is doing research on international advertising, pharmaceutical marketing, Internet marketing and media management. Her papers were presented at the annual conferences of the International Communication Association and the American Academy of Advertising. She received her master's degree in mass communications from Kansas State University, where she also taught classes in electronic media. Her undergraduate major was in pharmaceutical science, and she worked for four years as a news anchorwoman and master of ceremony in China.

 

Desiree Yomtoob | yomtoob@uiuc.edu
Yomtoob's area of research involves the development of a qualitiative movement methodology that works to reconfigure the social disciplining of the body. Currently she is formulating an aesthetic direction for her multimedia work, which allows for ways of being through performance, other than those established in these neo-colonial globalized times. Her area of interest is transnational culture, cultural resistance and the artistic and musical projects of the Persian Diaspora. She works extensively with somatics practices, including Alexander Technique, Hakomi and Bartenieff Fundamentals. Her desire as she continues her research is to formulate communications/cultural studies theory, which explains the meaning making process of the body in relationship and communication and as culture. Ideas of love and compassion are key in her work as she seeks to understand the technology of presence in resistent practices in the modern and post-modern discursive fields. Yomtoob has been a multimedia artist and vocalist for many years. Before entering graduate school she formulated a method for language teaching based in performance, which she taught in the ESL context. She has worked as the assistant program director for a university-based social issues theatre program. She also served as creative consultant for the independent film, "Highlife," which should be hitting the large screen anytime now. Her work has been published in Studies in Symbolic Interaction.

 

Ying Zhang | eclarezhang@gmail.com
Zhang's research interests include media and democracy, and Chinese media history. She received a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Qingdao University, and a master's degree in communication studies from Peking University. She worked as a news editor for China Central Television (First Channel) for two years and as a journalist and an anchor person for local televisions in China for another two years.