This year (2023 - 2024), I am a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center (Harvard University) as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project (Yale Law School). I am also a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Centre of Governance and Human Rights. I just wrapped up a postdoc working with an international, interdisciplinary team to understand how newsrooms approach misinformation around elections, particularly in the US. I was also a lecturer and postdoctoral associate at MIT’s CMSW department during this time. I was recently awarded a major research grant through the prestigious EU Marie Curie programme, which I will take up at the University of Copenhagen in summer 2024. I am very much looking forward to three years of research time!
I am interested in how diverse phenomenon and structures, from AI systems to newsroom composition to political history, interweave and impact how controversial topics are defined–and how they impact power relations in society. I am currently working on a manuscript that examines a sticky privacy concept, the Right to be Forgotten, in terms of how it was defined ten years ago by a panicked press…and the impacts we see today in platform power.

This is a network rendering of the most visible news sources online discussing a privacy topic. This image is from my doctoral research.

My second main project focuses on media environments deeply affected by religion, rurality, and radio. Currently, I am researching the Utah media ecosystem, mapping actors, networks, technologies, digital identities, and cultural/ideological influences.

Images from fieldwork, interviewing at talk radio stations in rural Utah, during the 2022 US midterm elections.

I recently, successfully defended my PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge (approved March 2021; conferred Sept 2022). I research and publish about how information moves online–what influences knowledge creation and ‘news’ in the digital age. I am passionate about understanding–and improving–real world connections between tech and social life, both as a practitioner and a researcher. I am keen to empathetically take into account different experiences and identities in understanding these connections.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about my work, ideas for collaboration, or you just want to have a conversation.