First Year Cohort
Second Year Cohort
Third Year Cohort
Fourth Year Cohort

Amelia Hardee Arsenault
aarsenau [at] usc [dot] edu

Amelia serves as the Wallis Annenberg Graduate Research Fellow to Professor Manuel Castells. She is broadly interested in how different social and political actors attempt to leverage media and ICT networks in service of their various agendas.  Her research areas include: communication technology and politics, media and ICT ownership, and the impact of new communication technologies on public diplomacy. Her research has been published in Information, Communication, & Society, International Sociology, the International Journal of Communication, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.  Amelia is currently working on a dissertation on the subject of US government media and communication policy and programs in southern Africa.  Before enrolling in graduate school, she spent several years living and working in Zimbabwe as the film coordinator for the Zimbabwe International Film Festival Trust. She holds a dual MSc/M.A. degree in Global Media and Communication from the London School of Economics & Political Science and USC Annenberg and a bachelor’s degree in Film and History from Dartmouth College..

Omri M. Ceren
ceren [at] usc [dot] edu

Omri focuses on the rhetoric of scientific controversies, specifically their epistemological stakes and their amenability to critical examination. His methodological interests include orthodox rhetorical criticism, Peircean pragmatism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He is a member of the American Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology and the Association for Psychoanalysis in Communication.

 
Joyee Chatterjee
jchatter [at] usc [dot] edu

Joyee did her undergraduate degree in Political Science from Delhi University, in India, followed by a M.A. in Social Work from the Tate Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. She followed that with a stint with the charity Child Rights and You. Her broad area of interest is in looking at how communication and popular culture reflect and impact social change, especially in South Asia. Her most recent project was a study of the use of South Asian matrimonial websites by members of the Indian community – especially looking at the impact on the idea of "arranged marriage" – and the articulation of contemporary gender-role expectations.

Christopher Anthony Chavez 

Chris received his bachelors in Marketing from Cal Poly, Pomona and an M.A. in Communications Management at USC. Chris’ research focuses on narrative systems in bi-lingual, bi-cultural communities with a particular focus on advertising, language and religion.  The subject of Chris’ dissertation is advertising as a social field and the degree to which Hispanic ad agencies and general market ad agencies can compete for the same forms of capital.  Chris currently teaches Comm455: Advertising and Society and is a research assistant with the Metamorphosis project.  Before enrolling as a as a doctoral student, Chris Chavez worked for ten years as an advertising executive at agencies in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston.

Sasha Costanza-Chock
costanza [at] usc [dot] edu

Sasha Costanza-Chock works on the political economy of communication, tactical media production and the transnational movement for communication rights. He is involved with the global network of Independent Media Centers and the Campaign for Communication Rights, and in the past was coordinator of the Global Media Policy Project at Free Press. He holds an A.B. from Harvard University (1999), an M.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania (2003) and is currently a second year Ph.D. student at USC Annenberg as well as a graduate fellow at the Annenberg Center. He is the author of several book chapters, journal articles and other publications on social movements and communication, global media policy and intellectual property rights. For more information visit Sasha's page on indymedia or read his CV.

Paulina Chow

Jae Eun Chung
jaeechun [at] usc [dot] edu

Jae Eun is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School. Before coming to USC, she studied at Indiana University with a focus on Media Economics and worked for IBM. She is interested in the interaction between economic, social, legal, political and technological aspects of new communication technology.

Melissa Franke

Deborah E. R. Hanan dhanan [at] usc [dot] edu Deborah Hanan is a doctoral fellow of communication, specializing in entertainment media, creative labor, transgression studies and queer theory. She holds an M.A. in Communication from USC Annenberg (2007) and an interdisciplinary M.A. in American Cultural Studies from CSU Los Angeles (2004), where she maintains an adjunct faculty position in the Communication and Media Studies department. Her doctoral research examines the ways in which ideological transgression has been alternately framed as both an American virtue and a repellent (and foreign) aberration in U.S. media products. Her research has been published in anthropology, media and communication quarterlies, journals, and anthologies, including Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, and Performing Communication: Essays on Policy, Politics and Identity (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008). In 2004, Hanan’s “Unmasking the Invisible: The Construction of Gender Variant Characters in Late 20th Century American and British Cinema (1992-2002)” was named an international finalist in the WAGS/UMI Most Distinguished Master’s Thesis competition. Before entering academia, Hanan enjoyed a lengthy professional career in both the recording and communication visual arts. To read more about Deborah Hanan, her research, music, and work in the visual arts, visit her website at http://www.deborahhanan.com

Laura Hawkins (Farmer)

Bettina Maria Heiss  heiss [at] usc [dot] edu  Bettina Heiss graduated from Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minn., with a major in Communication and a minor in Conflict Studies. In the broadest sense, she is interested in the way communication networks evolve over time. In the context of such networks, her areas of interest include knowledge emergence, accumulation and deterioration; technology use and virtuality; and the social psychology of networked organizing. She hopes to explore these topics further by examining inter-organizational activist networks involved in social movements.

Shawna Kelly
shawnake [at] usc [dot] edu

Kelly graduated from Western Washington University with a double major in Communication and Linguistics, and was a founding officer of the WWU Golden Key Honor Society chapter. Her minors included Teaching English as a Second Language, Latin and African History. In the private sector, Shawna has held such diverse jobs as grant editor for a biomedical-research company, office manager for an environmental consulting firm and tech support representative for a software company. She is currently the editorial assistant of the journal Media Psychology. Shawna’s research centers on the interactions between new communication technologies and culture.

Jade Miller
jademill [at] usc [dot] edu

Jade works on the political economy of creative production. She is particularly interested in creativity in the context of urban and regional agglomeration, and the development of global cities, including studies of global media flows and cultural industries policy. Jade is affiliated with the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication and the Center on Public Diplomacy. She is also a member of International Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the International Association of Media and Communication Researchers. She earned her B.A. in art history from NYU and worked in the fashion and advertising photography industry prior to coming to Annenberg for doctoral study.

Meghan Bridgid Moran
meghanmo [at] usc [dot] edu

Meghan's focus is on health communication. She works as a research assistant on the Metamorphosis project, where she is exploring various contributors to health literacy among a diverse range of Los Angeles communities. Her main research interest is the role of social identity and social norms in adolescent health behavior. Meghan is also interested in how adolescents use identity to negotiate media such as advertisements, branded campaigns, television and music.

Lauren Movius
lmovius [at] usc [dot] edu

Lauren Movius graduated  from the University of California at Los Angeles with a B.A. in Communication Studies. She received an M.Sc. in Global Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.A. from the University of Southern California. Lauren's areas of research include media and power, international communications policy, and global social movements and Internet governance. Lauren has received a USC Graduate School Oakley Fellowship for the 2008 - 2009 academic year.

Katherine Maureen Pieper

Laura Portwood-Stacer
portwood [at] usc [dot] edu

Laura's general academic interests are cultural studies, feminist theory, and television studies. She is currently working on a dissertation on issues of identity construction and performance within political movements, which is tentatively titled "Making the Anarchist Self: Culture, Lifestyle, and Radical Political Identity." While at Annenberg, she has taught courses on interpreting popular culture and on advertising and society.

Shawn Mathew Powers 
spowers [at] usc [dot] edu

Shawn Powers is a Ph.D. candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and a Research Associate at USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy. His research interests are focused on the use of media in times of war and conflict and the potential roles that media technologies can have on resolving cross-cultural disagreements and international tensions. He previously worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has conducted field and media research in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Steven Rafferty
sfraffer[at]usc[dot]edu

Steven earned a B. A. in communication studies from the University of Pittsburgh. Steven's research focuses on the relationship between popular culture and the rhetoric of identity, culture and society. His methodological interests combine rhetorical criticism, cultural studies and critical theory. At USC Annenberg Steven teaches COMM 204: Public Speaking. He is a member of the National Communication Association and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.

 
Rabindra A. Ratan
ratan [at] usc [dot] edu

Robby Ratan came to USC Annenberg after six years at Stanford University, where he received a B.A. with honors in Science, Technology and Society and an M.A. in Communication with a focus in Human Computer Interaction, and worked as a research assistant at Stanford's Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab and the Toyota Info Technology Center in Palo Alto. His research interests are primarily focused on the psychology of advanced media interfaces and virtual worlds. He has designed and run numerous experimental studies to test the psychological implications of various technologies, including the Nintendo Wii, immersive virtual reality environments, driving simulators, and automated voice interfaces. At Annenberg, Robby is continuing this type of research while also exploring related areas, such as the sociological implications of online communities, especially virtual worlds such as MMORPGS and Second Life. He is interested in developing theories relating to virtual self-presentation, identity management, social and self-presence, choice, and attention/multi-tasking. He also sporadically posts to his blog at: http://mediaman-raratan.blogspot.com/.

Stephen Roy Robertson

D. Travers Scott
davidtsc [at] usc [dot] edu

D. Travers Scott's research interests include technological culture, gender and sexuality, and popular culture, with a current focus on the history of perceptions of diseases related to electronic communications media. He holds a Master of Communication in Digital Media from the University of Washington. Recent publications include chapters on blogging in Blogging, Citizenship and the Future of Media (Routledge, M. Tremayne, Ed.) and Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times ( MIT Press, Boler, Ed., forthcoming 2008), and book reviews for the International Journal of Communication and the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. He also holds a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has had previous lives as author of two novels, an advertising executive, nonprofit arts administrator, and performance artist. More info is at his personal site and blog.

Jon F. Sharp

Cuihua (Cindy) Shen
shencuihua [at] gmail [dot] com

Cuihua (Cindy) Shen is a Ph.D. student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Her fundamental research interest is to understand human activities in the new social spaces created by the Internet and new communication technologies. Specifically, she studies virtual communities that are created for information sharing, collaborative production, and entertainment, from both socio-psychological and sociological perspectives. Methodologically, she employs quantitative as well as social network analytic tools. Some of her ongoing research projects include the analysis of network structure of open source software developer community, and the evolution of online communities. Cindy comes from Suzhou, a beautiful city in southeast China. Before coming to USC, she earned her BA in English at Zhejiang University and her MA in Communication at National University of Singapore. Learn more about her at her Web page or blog.

Brad Shipley

Paolo Sigismondi

Kimberlie Joy Stephens
Kimberlie Stephens is currently a PhD student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.  Her research interests include interorganizational collaboration and strategic alliance networks.  More specifically she is interested in the process of how these relationships play out, including what type of information is shared, what makes interactions successful, and how organizations can learn from their experiences and apply newly gained knowledge to future collaborative relationships.Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Kimberlie received her B.A. in Communication from the Annenberg School and worked for several years as a professional conference planner in the continuing medical education field.

Adam Clinton Symonds

Einat Temkin

Don Waisanen
waisanen [at] usc [dot] edu

Don Waisanen is a doctoral candidate and Walter Fisher Scholar at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Don was a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs, and has worked in radio and television. His other experiences include speechwriting, political campaign coordination, and teaching speech and debate. His research interests are in rhetoric and public affairs (the public sphere and civil society), political satire and parody, religious controversies, and communication education. He is currently working toward a dissertation on political conversion narratives in the last half century of American public discourse, and has some new articles coming out in various journals and edited volumes on why Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are better for democracy than much mainstream news. When not immersed in all things academe, he enjoys acting and sketch writing.
 

Hua (Helen) Wang
wanghua [at] usc [dot] edu

Hua "Helen" Wang is a doctoral candidate and researcher at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, USA. Helen holds a B.A. in Japanese Language and Culture from Peking(Beijing) University, China and a M.A. in Mass Communication and Media Studies from San Diego State University, USA. Her current research interests revolve around health promotion and social change via entertainment-education interventions, with a focus on new media platforms (such as digital games and online communities). She studies (1) games and simulations designed for learning, health education, and social change; and (2) social aspects of the Internet, especially social connectivity on- and off-line. Helen is affiliated with the Center for the Digital Future and the Annenberg Program on Online Communities (APOC) at University of Southern California, USA; the Center for Advanced Media Research (CAMeRA) at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and the NetLab, University of Toronto, Canada.

 
Matthew Weber
matthesw [at] usc [dot] edu
 
Matthew Weber is focused on the evolution of organizational structures and the interplay between structuration and technology. His primary interest within this area is the emergence, growth and eventual decline of individual online communities, as well as the changing business practices that result from the collision of brands and communities. Methodologically, Matthew is working to advance network theory in the area of graph modeling and to develop techniques for managing large-scale data analysis. He has recently given lectures and presentations on the evolution of the newspaper industry and the business of media. He is a member of the Phi Beta Tau Journalism Honors Society, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Previously, he worked as a media strategist for Starcom Worldwide and as an assistant brand manager for Tribune Corp., where he launched multiple new media initiatives. Matthew earned a B.S . in Industrial Engineering and Economics from Northwestern University, and received an M.S. in Journalism and Media Management at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

 
Mei (Kitty) Zhou
meizhou [at] dslextreme [dot] com

Mei (Kitty) Zhou graduated from Peking University with a B.A. in English Language and Literature, and got her M.A. in Communication from the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Her research interests include media theories, diasporic theories, globalization studies, and culture and philosophy of technology. She is currently doing her dissertation on the counter-memory construction by the global spiritual movement Falun Gong. She has been working as producer and MC for a global Chinese language media New Tang Dynasty TV Station. From December 2006 until May 2007, she was on the road as the MC for NTDTV's Chinese New Year Spectacular.