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.

John Cheney-Lippold
jcheney [at] usc [dot] edu

John Cheney-Lippold spends most of his time thinking about the role of algorithms in the construction of identity online. John is interested in how categories of identity are created by computer algorithms using data from surveillance technologies. His primary interest is in the ways that theories of intersectionality can be used to analyze how these identity categories can be refined and realigned in real time according to constant streams of new data obtained through surveillance practice. He also reads and writes on radical and non-radical Argentine cinema, and is a fanatic of the soccer team Boca Juniors. John graduated from American University with a B.A. in both Political Science and International Relations, and has an M.A. in Communication from the University of Southern California.

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.

 
Lauren Frank
lfrank [at] usc [dot] edu

Lauren Frank graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Psychology, writing her thesis on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and children's television. She earned her MHS from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in May 2006. She has worked for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services conducting research on maternal and child health. As a PhD student, she is studying health communication, mass media, and organizational communication.  Lauren is particularly interested in how public health organizations produce and disseminate their messages and what the potential impacts of such messages are. For more information, visit Lauren’s website: http://www.laurenbfrank.com. 

Melissa Franke

Jessica Gould jessicjg [at] usc [dot] edu   Jessica Gould (B.A.-Psychology, UC Santa Cruz) is a PhD Candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication. Her research focuses on organizational communication. More specifically, she is interested the processes of collaboration and knowledge sharing among members of both distributed and collocated knowledge-intensive teams. Jessica is also interested in the use collaborative technological platforms in organizational settings.   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). Hanan maintains an adjunct faculty position in the Communication and Film/TV Studies departments at CSU Los Angeles and is also an assistant lecturer at the Annenberg School of Communication. Her dissertation, "National Transgressions: Representing Mobility, “Boundary-Busting” and the Allegorical American During Periods of Major Economic Crisis" examines how tropes of transgression and mobility have circulated in U.S. media products when apprehensions over employment, housing, and the economy have dominated the national psyche. Hanan's earlier research has been published in anthropology, media and communication quarterlies, journals, and anthologies, including Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, Performing Communication: Essays on Policy, Politics and Identity (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008) and Loving the L Word:Television Fans and Queer Pleasures (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2010 release date). Additionally, in 2004, her “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 Hanan's research, teaching, and careers in music and the visual arts, visit her (always under re-construction) 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

Before starting her PhD, Shawna Kelly studied Communication, Linguistics, and History. Her industry experience includes implementing information-sharing technologies in small businesses and doing both software development and technical support. Her research interests are in new technologies, communication, and culture, with a focus on digital games. Some of her previous projects include: exploring the entry of citizens into virtual worlds, the meaning of citizenship in these worlds, negotiating gender and ethnicity representation in massively multiplayer online games, and the social impacts of relationships developed through online games. Shawna's interests have recently shifted from player studies back to the game development industry. She is currently working on her dissertation and is the Managing Editor of Games & Culture.

 
Charlotte Lapsansky
lapsansk [at] usc [dot] edu

Charlotte Lapsansky is interested in media and entertainment effects on culture, norms and behaviors and media’s role in social change. She has a strong background in human rights, gender, race and international development. Ms. Lapsansky worked in Delhi as program coordinator for communications with Breakthrough, an organization that uses pop culture and education to raise awareness about human rights. She is working on the research and strategy development for an upcoming multi-media campaign to reduce stigma against HIV+ women. She also worked from 2002–2004 in the New York office of Breakthrough, where she organized a national performance theater series addressing issues of immigration and human rights; authored An Educator’s Guide to Racial and Ethnic Justice; and conducted numerous workshops and presentations on women’s rights, violence against women, racial justice and human rights. Last year, Ms. Lapsansky was an American India Foundation fellow working with Pravah, a Delhi-based NGO that works with young people to develop leadership for social change. There she designed and conducted training programs on development and cross-cultural adaptation and conducted an impact assessment of a teachers training program. Ms. Lapsansky graduated from Brown University in Biology, where she conducted biological field work and research on animal behavior as well as engaging in research on urban development issues in the US and India.

Jingfang Liu
jingfanl [at] usc [dot] edu

Jingfang Liu's research interests include ICT and social change at the organizational, societal, and global levels, the space between technologies and cultural values, virtual communities, NGO network, and environmental communication. Prior to coming to USC Annenberg, she worked as an IT business analyst and consultant for various organizations including Cox Communications, Georgia.gov, and small businesses, and served clients such as GE and the Federal Home Loan Bank. She originally came from Beijing, China, and obtained an M.S. in CIS (Computer Information Systems) and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics, both at Georgia State University. She also holds a B.A. in English.

Drew Margolin dmargoli [at] usc [dot] edu Drew is a PhD Candidate at Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Drew’s research focuses on the understanding the relationship between social networks, epistemology and communication in an evolving, adaptive system.  Drew's current work examines the co-evolution of networks and discourse in different social contexts, such as within scientific disciplines, financial markets and NGO communities. Prior to coming to USC Annenberg, Drew was Chief Financial Officer of Medley Global Advisors, a research firm that provided information about government policy to hedge funds and investment banks.  Drew graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1996 with distinction in Economics.

 
Jade Miller
jademill [at] usc [dot] edu

Jade works on the political economy of creative production and cultural industry development. She is particularly interested in creative industries in the context of urban and regional agglomeration, and the development of global cities, including studies of global media flows and cultural industries policy.

She is currently working on a dissertation on the development of creative industry hubs in the global South, with a focus on policy and on connections to global creative industry networks. Among other topics, she is conducting extensive fieldwork in Nigeria regarding the development and shifting shape of the robust Nigerian home video industry, or Nollywood. She received a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship to support this research.

Jade is affiliated with the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication. She is also a member of ICA, NCA, and IAMCR. She earned her B.A. magna cum laude 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.

 
Eleanor Morrison
egmorris [at] usc [dot] edu

Eleanor Morrison graduated from the University of Georgia with a major in Media Studies and minors in Sociology and Drama. After working in Hollywood and the D.C. non-profit world, she returned to academia via the Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics & Political Science (MSc in Social and Public Communication, '06). Ms. Morrison's academic work revolves around the intersection of popular culture and social change, with a specific interest in issues of tolerance and equality.

 
 Lauren Movius
lmovius [at] usc [dot] edu

Lauren Movius serves as the Wallis Annenberg Graduate Research Fellow to Professor Manuel Castells. She is broadly interested in international communication policy, globalization, the impacts of information technologies on society, and communication and social change. Lauren’s dissertation focuses on Internet governance and civil society. Her research on communication rights, privacy, communication policy, and health communication has been published in the Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, Global Media Journal, Journal of Global Communication, and as book chapters. Lauren holds a dual MSc/M.A. degree in Global Media and Communication from the London School of Economics & Political Science (2004) and USC Annenberg (2005) and a bachelor’s degree in Communication from UCLA (2002).

 
Russell Newman
rnewman [at] usc [dot] edu

Previous to his arrival at USC, Russell Newman served as the research director for the national nonprofit advocacy group Free Press. There, he focused on media and telecommunications policy, tracking current issues, writing issue briefs, creating Web content, and speaking publicly regarding emerging debates. With Robert McChesney and Ben Scott, he is the co-editor of The Future of Media: Resistance and Reform in the 21st Century (Seven Stories Press, 2005), named as one of Working Assets' Recommended Reads for July 2005. In addition, he spent several years as a freelance multimedia designer, also serving as production designer for several independent films. He was active in noncommercial radio in Boston for nearly a decade. Russell was a Waterston Fellow at Suffolk University's Sawyer School of Management, where he earned a master's degree focusing on the political economy of mass communication, nonprofit management and documentary production; he earned his bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Russell is interested in exploring the intersections of the political economy of media, the epistemological foundations of media policymaking and governance, and ongoing struggles against existing structures of power. 

Shuya Pan
shuyapan [at] usc [dot] edu

Shuya Pan graduated from China University of Politics and Law with a B.A. in Law and completed her first year of study in the Master of Communication Management program at USC Annenberg. Pan has broad interests in studies of media, cross-cultural communications, and the socioeconomic, political and cultural changes with the development of information and communication technologies. Since graduation, Pan had been a journalist in China's Xinhua News Agency and covered a wide range of important issues on finance, macroeconomy, and political and social events.

 
Joe Phua
phua [at] usc [dot] edu

Joe Phua’s research interests are health, intergroup and interpersonal communication, focusing on the use of new technology in these areas. Recent research papers include:  Consumption of sports team-related media and its influence on sports fans’ identity salience and self-esteem (Awarded Top student paper at ICA annual conference in Montreal, Canada, May 2008); Participation in online quit smoking self-help groups and its implications for social support and smoking cessation self-efficacy; and the roles of Social identity and normative information in influencing smoking behavior and attitudes towards smoking among college students.  Joe’s teaching experience includes: Sports, communication and culture (COMM 383), Foundations for the study of entertainment in communication and society (COMM 300) and Fashion, culture and society (COMM 396).  He also currently serves as journal administrator and editorial assistant for the Journal of Communication.  Joe received his BA in Cinema-television Critical studies from USC School of Cinematic Arts (earned May 2002), and MA in Communication Management from USC Annenberg School for Communication (earned May 2004). 

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’s research interests focus on the theory and practice of public argumentation and deliberation in contemporary communicative ecologies, particularly as they intersect with questions of identity, community, and citizenship. Steven’s dissertation explores the role of visible, audible, and discursive tropes in popular culture as inducements toward the acceptance of race as a taken-for-granted logic of difference and practices of adversarial aesthetics that disrupt and destabilize that logic. He holds an M.A. in Communication Studies from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California with emphases on rhetoric and cultural studies. He received his B. A. in Communication Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. At USC Steven has taught COMM 204-Introduction to Public Speaking and COMM 322-Argumentation and Advocacy. He has also served as a Teaching Assistant for COMM 201-Introduction to Communication as a Liberal Art.

 
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

 
Janel S. Schuh
schuh [at] usc [dot] edu

A Provost's Fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, Janel earned a master’s degree on a Park Fellowship at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  As part of her ongoing exploration of the role of celebrities in American society, she is currently focusing on adolescents and young adults, examining celebrity content to which they attend and that they (re)produce, their reasons for engaging with celebrities and the ways they do so, and any effects of their involvement with celebrities.

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

D. Travers Scott researches culture and communication technologies, feminist theory, gender/sexuality, popular culture, visual culture, and sound studies. His dissertation, "Killer Apps & Sick Users: Technology, Disease, and Feminism," examines contemporary and historic associations of disease with electronic communications media. He holds a Master of Communication in Digital Media from the University of Washington and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent publications include Rocky Mountain Communication Review, Feminist Media Studies (in press), Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (revise and resubmit); chapters in Blogging, Citizenship and the Future of Media (Routledge, M. Tremayne, Ed.) and Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times (MIT Press, Boler, Ed.), and book reviews for the International Journal of Communication and the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. In addition to scholarly work, he has published two novels and a story collection, worked for 13 years in the advertising industry, and also worked as a nonprofit arts administrator and performance artist. More information is at his personal site.

Jon F. Sharp

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

Cuihua (Cindy) Shen is a PhD Candidate 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, the evolution of online communities, and the social dynamics of virtual worlds. 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 website or blog. A complete CV is available here.

Brad Shipley

Adam Clinton Symonds

Einat Temkin

 
Nupur Tustin
nsen [at] usc [dot] edu

Nupur Tustin works in the area of health communication, with an especial interest in health information seeking and peer support. She is currently working on patient delay, or delay in seeking medical help for symptoms. Prior to enrolling in the doctoral program at Annenberg, Nupur worked as a business correspondent with Reuters and a producer with CNBC. She has a Master's degree in Communication from USC, a Master’s degree in English from the University of Connecticut, a Bachelor's degree also in English from St. Xavier's College, a Jesuit college in Calcutta, India, and a diploma in Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, India where she trained under the BBC's Naomi Goldsmith

 
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 completing a dissertation on political conversion narratives in the last half century of American public discourse, and has published several articles on the rhetorical dynamics of political comedians such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. His hobbies include acting, improv, and sketch writing and performance. 

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.