Ioana Literat
iliterat [at] usc [dot] edu
A proud Romanian from the city of Timisoara, Ioana graduated summa cum laudae from Middlbury College, with Highest Honors in Film and Media Culture. Her belief in the importance of ICT proliferation, coupled with the joy she finds in teaching, has led her to become deeply involved in the field of education, teaching filmmaking and social justice curricula to children in the Dominican Republic, Romania, Uruguay and India. Before coming to USC, she worked as the field coordinator of The Modern Story program, a grassroots project aiming to bridge the digital divide by introducing media literacy and filmmaking workshops in government schools in India. At USC, Ioana is a researcher for PLAY! with Prof. Henry Jenkins and the Public Interactives Research Team with Prof. Anne Balsamo. Currently, Ioana is exploring the educational, cultural and transnational aspects of digital participation, and developing an analytical typology of user engagement in online crowdsourced art. She has recently been awarded the Phi Kappa Phi Academic Honors Award for her research on crowdsourced art. For more information on her latest research and publications, please see Ioana's website (
www.ioanaliterat.com).