MTS students currently on the job market
John J. Brooks
John J. Brooks is a doctoral candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University, working with the Center of Media Psychology and Social Influence (COM-PSI) under Dr. Nathan Walter. His research primarily pertains to mass communication in the contexts of health and politics—specifically, the use of entertainment-education to promote prosocial outcomes, the power of strategic narratives to shape public health, and the influence of mass media representations of contentious social issues—and has been published in leading outlets including Health Communication, Media Psychology, and Journal of Health Communication. In addition to research, John is an enthusiastic educator: he previously received the School of Communication’s “Outstanding Graduate Instructor” award and has worked extensively with the Searle Center for Advancing Learning & Teaching as both a Graduate Teaching Mentor and Formative Feedback Partner. Previously, John completed a B.A. in Theatre/Gender Studies, an M.S. in Health Communication, and an M.A. in Media, Technology, and Society, all from Northwestern.
Adam Goodkind
a.goodkind@u.northwestern.edu
Adam Goodkind is a PhD candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program, working out of the CollabLab with Prof. Darren Gergle, and the Inclusive Technology Lab with Prof. Anne Marie Piper. Adam’s thesis is titled “Using keystrokes to predict social dynamics in online dialogue.” It identifies how we can use timing differences in keystrokes to recover many of the same social cues we usually detect in signals such as tone-of-voice or pauses, but are lost in text-based digital communication. His thesis brings together Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Cognitive Science, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and statistical modeling.
Adam received an MA in Computational Linguistics from the CUNY Graduate Center, and a BA from Columbia University.
MTS students
Rod Abhari
rodabhari2025@u.northwestern.edu
Rod Abhari is a Ph.D. student broadly interested in understanding the social and material conditions that enable the spread of scientific (mis)information. At Northwestern, he is working with Dr. Agnes Horvat to develop an article filtering tool which can track the online diffusion of scientific research and detect questionable research. Through this, he aims to both improve the accuracy of scientific reporting and combat the spread of science-based populism. He holds an M.A. in Communications from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and an M.A. in Science and Technology studies (STS) from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.
Emily A. Andrews
emilyandrews@u.northwestern.edu
Emily A. Andrews is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society program and researcher in the Center of Media Psychology and Social Influence (COM-PSI) lab under the guidance of Dr. Nathan Walter. Her research interests exist within the realms of health and science communication. More specifically, she is interested in vaccine hesitancy and misinformation, narrative persuasion, along with attitudes and prosocial behavior. She aims to construct corrections to vaccine and health-related misinformation. She holds a BA from SUNY Geneseo in Psychology and an MA from SUNY University at Buffalo in Communication.
Mohammad Behroozian
Mohammad Behroozian is passionate about studying educational media for wartime. He has studied political science at the American University of Afghanistan and earned his master’s degree in television producing at Boston University on a Fulbright scholarship. Mohammad has nearly a decade of experience in media and communications work.
Jamie A. Cooley
Jamie A. Cooley is a second year PhD student in the Media, Technology, and Society program, advised by Dr. AJ Christian and a part of Dr. Moya Bailey’s Digital Apothecary Lab.
Research interests include the impacts of algorithms, social media use by creators within the intersections of queer and Black or brown identities, digital Black resilience, and digital poetry communities.
Creative interests include writing poetry based around mental health awareness/advocacy within the Black community and making video essays.
Christopher Dobmeier
dobmeier@u.northwestern.edu
Chris Dobmeier is a third-year PhD student in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University, working in the Center Of Media Psychology and Social Influence (COM-PSI) with Dr. Nathan Walter. Chris studies the persuasive power of storytelling, particularly through psychological mechanisms that facilitate information processing, such as narrative transportation, identification, and emotional flow. His work expands across various forms of affect (awe, disgust, humor), and has been applied to health, political, and sustainability contexts. Chris currently serves as the Chair of Grants and Fundraising for the Northwestern Prison Education Program. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in Communication from the SUNY University at Buffalo.
Julia Fernandez
j-fernandez@u.northwestern.edu
Julia Fernandez is a PhD student in the Media, Technology and Society program working in Dr. Jeremy Birnholtz’s Social Media Lab. Her research focuses on how users navigate complex sociotechnical ecosystems in order to express themselves and make social connections. She is also conducting research regarding popular perceptions of algorithmic systems. Prior to Northwestern, Julia was a Junior Fellow at the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in the Library of Congress’ Office of Strategic Initiatives, working with Dr. Trevor Owens. She received her BA in American Studies from Smith College with a focus in Media and Digital Culture.
Floor Fiers
floorfiers@u.northwestern.edu
Floor Fiers is a PhD candidate in the MTS program who works together with Dr. Aaron Shaw and Dr. Eszter Hargittai. She is a part of the Community Data Science Collective and the WebUse Project. She is interested in questions related to digital inequality and discrimination, particularly in the realm of the gig economy. Originally from the Netherlands, Floor first came to the United States in 2013 to attend the United World College (Montezuma, NM). In 2019, she graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Sociology from St. Lawrence University (Canton, NY).
Valerie Gruest
valgruest@u.northwestern.edu
Valerie Gruest is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology and Society doctoral program working with Dr. Pablo Boczkowski and a graduate student affiliate of the Center for Latinx Digital Media. She holds an M.A. in Media, Technology and Society (Northwestern University), and a B.A. in Communication Studies with a double major in Art, Theory & Practice (Northwestern University). She is interested in the effects of new media on eating disorders and body image issues, the visibility of marginalized communities in digital media, and the evolution of contemporary art practices in online spaces. In addition to her scholarly research, she serves as an advocate for mental health and safe sport for aquatic disciplines in the Americas, given her background as an Olympic swimmer.
Nick Hagar
nicholashagar2018@u.northwestern.edu
Nick Hagar is a PhD student working with Dr. Nick Diakopoulos in the Computational Journalism Lab. His research examines the business of news, with a focus on the labor of journalists. His current project uses computational methods to examine the link between freelancer career trajectories and news content. Nick holds a BS in Journalism from Northwestern University.
Sohyeon Hwang is a PhD student in the Media, Technology, and Society Program at Northwestern University, advised by Dr. Aaron Shaw and generously supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Her research broadly centers around organization, governance, and collaboration in social computing systems, using both interview and computational methods. Sohyeon’s current work focuses on how online groups variably develop and implement unique governing routines, and the downstream implications of this heterogeneity for platform/system-level regulation. Her goal is to work alongside communities to develop robust understandings of organizational practices across online spaces and foster both accountability and autonomy in decentralized forms of online governance. At Northwestern, she also co-organizes a book club focused on critical readings of tech and media under the HCI+D Center. Sohyeon holds a B.A. in Government and in Information Science from Cornell University.
Nash Jenkins
Nash Jenkins is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society program. His research examines the epistemological, intersubjective, ethical, and political structures that emerge in and organize the digital public sphere: specifically the contemporary rise of conspiracy theories and the circulation of the paranoid affects that inflect them. More broadly, Nash’s work contemplates how the immersive experience of digital media challenges prior ideological notions of selfhood and authenticity, situating its inquiry at the historical and social coordinates of this rupture. Nash holds a M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University; before entering academia, he worked as a correspondent for TIME Magazine in Hong Kong and Washington.
Kerstin Kalke
Kerstin Kalke is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program working in Dr. Courtney Scherr’s Health Communication Interaction Design Lab. Kerstin’s research focuses on developing communication strategies to facilitate health decision making under high degrees of uncertainty and risk. She is particularly interested in understanding how emotions and affective forecasting affect people’s decision-making processes. Previous projects were situated in the contexts of cardiac and cancer genetics, colon cancer screening, and breast cancer. Kerstin holds a BA in English/American and German Studies from the Julius-Maximilians Universitaet in Wuerzburg, Germany, and a MA in Communication from the University of New Mexico.
Callie S. Kalny
CarolynSartain2025@u.northwestern.edu
Callie Kalny is a PhD candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University where she works with Dr. Nathan Walter in the Center of Media Psychology and Social Influence (COM-PSI). Her research is broadly guided by the investigation of how messages mean and centers around the communication of risk and uncertainty. She is particularly interested in the interplay between message design, emotion and affect, information processing, and persuasive outcomes in contexts related to health and science. Callie’s overarching research goal is to contribute to the development of communication tools and interventions that improve decision-making and promote the uptake of prosocial attitudes and behaviors. She is a graduate of Mercer University (BA, Communication Studies) and Wake Forest University (MA, Communication).
Yena Lee
Yena Lee is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern School of Communication. She is interested in studying the emerging forms and processes of networked social movement and the technological, political, and organizational conditions that enable or challenge the rise of such movements. Her research aims to better understand the changing logics of social movement at both levels of consciousness-raising and policymaking through an interdisciplinary and comparative lens. Her most recent research published in the Information, Communication, & Society journal looks at the role of leadership in feminist networked social movements in South Korea. She has previously written about feminist activist chatbot in Brazil and feminist K-pop fan activism on Twitter. Visit her website here.
Breniel Lemley
Breniel Lemley is a third-year Ph.D. student in the in the Media, Technology, and Society program and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She conducts research in the Center on Media and Human Development with Dr. Ellen Wartella. Her current work involves learning how science media and its use can help support young children’s science learning. Prior to attending Northwestern, Lemley worked in the Education Division of SRI International as an Education Research Associate. There, she supported projects funded by the Institute of Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, National Science Foundation, George Lucas Education Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She holds a BA in Psychology with a minor in Music from the University of San Francisco.
Maya Lennon
Maya Lennon is a PhD Candidate in the Media, Technology and Society program. She is also a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She conducts research with Dr. Ellen Wartella in the Center on Media and Human Development. Her research focuses on how young children use media with their peers or adults. She also studies how STEM concepts can be learned from different types of educational technologies. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Science from Brown University.
Mora Matassi
moramatassi@u.northwestern.edu
Mora Matassi (she / ella) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Technology and Society program. Her research focuses on communication, technology, and digital culture. She holds an M.A. in Media, Technology, and Society (Northwestern University), an Ed.M. in Technology, Innovation, and Education (Harvard University), and a B.A. in Communication (Universidad de San Andrés). Mora has been coordinator of the Center for Latinx Digital Media at Northwestern University and the Center for the Study of Media and Society in Argentina, as well as research assistant for the CLEVR project, a partnership between MIT’s Education Arcade and the MIT Game Lab. Her papers have appeared in New Media & Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Social Media & Society, among others. Her book To Know Is to Compare Studying Social Media across Nations, Media, and Platforms, written with Pablo Boczkowski, will be published by the MIT Press in 2023. Mora has contributed to CNN Radio Argentina and co-produced/hosted a podcast with Revista Anfibia about self-tracking technologies. She has received scholarships from institutions like the Fulbright Commission and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Joshua-Paul Miles
Joshua-Paul Miles is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program studying with Dr. Michelle Shumate. He is a research assistant in the Network for Nonprofit and Social Impact Lab. Joshua-Paul investigates interorganizational networks across organizational domains. Specifically, he aims to understand how interorganizational networks can effectively address interconnected and complex problem spaces. Some of these contexts include nonprofit-corporate partnerships, community-based coalitions, and systems and technologies of care. He hopes to help lead organizations to successful cross-sector outcomes that benefit various stakeholders through methods grounded in robust and multilevel research analyses. In addition to communication studies and network science, his research contributes knowledge and pulls from various fields, such as public administration, social work, nonprofit studies, and management science. He received his M.A. in Media, Technology, and Society from Northwestern University. Prior to Northwestern, Joshua-Paul earned his B.A. in Corporate Communication and Spanish for the Business Professions with a minor in Human Resource Management from Marquette University.
Chloe Mortenson
Chloe Mortenson is a PhD student in the Media, Technology and Society program, working in the Center for Communication and Public Policy with Dr. Erik Nisbet. Her research is focused on political communication and comparative politics, specifically on the relationship between media ecosystems and regime types, information seeking, misinformation and affective polarization. Chloe received her M.A in political communication at The Ohio State University, and her B.A at Duquesne University in international relations and communication studies. For her master’s thesis she studied the indirect impact of misinformation on democracy through electoral fairness.
Annika Pinch
Annika Pinch is a PhD student in the Media, Technology, and Society program working with Dr. Jeremy Birnholtz and Dr. Moya Bailey. Her research focuses on marginalized communities’ everyday experiences with digital technology, and the different ways that they adapt technologies for their own needs. She is currently working on projects related to how people manage stigma online. Other topics in which she is interested include digital inequalities; the ethics of the Internet; platforms and algorithms; and the impact of big data systems. She received her MA in Media, Technology, and Society, where she wrote her MA thesis on how LGBTQ+ people manage visibility, privacy, and trust on dating apps in India. Prior to Northwestern, Annika received her BA in Psychology from Cornell University.
Sanjana Ramesh
Sanjana Ramesh is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in the Media, Technology, and Society program working with Dr. Courtney Scherr in the Health Communication Interaction Design Lab. Sanjana holds an MPH in Health Communication and Social Marketing and has several years of experience in the nonprofit healthcare sector. Broadly, Sanjana’s research agenda centers on designing health communication and behavior change interventions to improve patient-centered care. She is particularly interested in designing more targeted behavioral interventions to support women in navigating and managing their health below the belt (I.,e, gynecological, reproductive & pelvic health). Sanjana is currently involved with Renalis, a femtech startup creating digital solutions for pelvic health. She is also a 200 hour certified yoga instructor at Studio Three, a local boutique fitness studio.
Thomas Rousse
Thomas H. Rousse studies the intersection of law and technology, with a focus on intellectual property and online communities, as a joint J.D./Ph.D. student. He currently serves as the Senior Online Editor of Northwestern University Law Review. He holds an MSc. in Media, Technology and Games Analysis from the IT University of Copenhagen and graduated from Northwestern’s American Studies program in 2010. His advisor is Aaron Shaw.
Camille Saucier
Camille J. Saucier is a doctoral candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern. Her major areas of study include health/strategic communication, misinformation, and media effects. Her research interests explore the sensemaking strategies we use to understand information and the processes that can bias our interpretations. In other words, why do people accept some types of information but not others, how does this information influence perceptions, and what are the stories used to make sense of it all?
Prior to joining COM-PSI, she worked as a research specialist with the Media Impact Project and Hollywood, Health & Society under the Norman Lear Center. She holds a B.A. in Psychology, M.A. in Communication Management, and graduate certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the University of Southern California.
Anne-Marie Singh
annemarie@u.northwestern.edu
Anne-Marie Singh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society Program at Northwestern University and is working at the Network for Nonprofit and Social Impact under Dr. Michelle Shumate’s advisorship. She has several years of experience working in environmental nonprofits as a communicator and as a science journalist in public media. Her research interests include organizational communication and cross-sector partnerships in the nonprofit sector. Anne-Marie has a M.S. degree in Science Journalism from Boston University and a B.A. in English Literature from Delhi University, India.
Hannah Studd
Hannah.Studd@u.northwestern.edu
Hannah Studd is a PhD candidate in the MTS program who works together with Dr. Madhu Reddy and Dr. Maia Jacobs. Hannah’s research focuses on improving technology used for supporting mental health care. Specifically, her work explores how self-reflection impacts mental health and how technology can support self-reflection. Hannah holds an M.S in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in psychology from The College of Wooster. Before entering academia, Hannah worked in clinical research informatics for the Boston Children’s Hospital and as a UX researcher for WellSky.
Facundo Suenzo
Facundo Suenzo is a Ph.D. student in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University working with Dr. Pablo J. Boczkowski. He is interested in urban sociology, technological infrastructures, and inequalities. Starting in the Fall of 2022, he will be the coordinator of the Center for Latinx Digital Media. Born and raised in Argentina, Facundo earned his BA in Communication from the Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSA), a MA in Sociology from the Universidad Nacional del General San Martín (IDAES/UNSAM), and a MA in Media, Technology, and Society (Northwestern University). Facundo’s work has appeared in New Media & Society, Journalism and Cuadernos.info. He is currently working on the book manuscript The patina of distrust: Misinformation in a context of generalized skepticism (joint with Eugenia Mitchelstein, Pablo Boczkowski, and María Celeste Wagner), under contract with the MIT Press. Before Northwestern, he was a coordinator at the Center for Media and Society (MESO) in Argentina between 2018 and 2020. Facundo is affiliated with the Digital Apothecary Lab, led by Dr. Moya Bailey.
Sapna Suresh
Sapna Suresh is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the MTS program at Northwestern working with Dr. Nathan Walter in the Center of Media Psychology and Social Influence. Her research examines the relationship between mass media messages, how audiences process them, and the resultant attitudinal and behavioral effects. In her recent work, Sapna has applied these concepts to the study of the efficacy of public health information and behavior change campaigns; the use of emotions as levers of pro-environmental change; the persistence of misinformation in the online environment; and the underpinnings of alternative health information spread on social media. Sapna holds a BA from Rice University in engineering and policy studies.
Marwa Tahboub
marwatahboub2026@u.northwestern.edu
Marwa Tahboub is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society program. She works in the Network for Nonprofit and Social Impact [NNSI] lab under Dr. Michelle Shumate. Her research interests surround nonprofit community organizations’ social media engagement with marginalized communities. Marwa received her B.A. in professional communication and psychology at the University of Michigan-Flint. For her undergraduate honors thesis, she worked with NNSI to study how referral networks reacted to COVID-19.
Daniel Trielli
Daniel Trielli is researching how news reaches the public in our algorithmically-defined information world, and how computational journalism can be applied to investigate complex issues. He has a master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland, where he studied the way in which search engines mediated political information during the 2016 United States elections. Before coming to the U.S., Daniel worked as a journalist for over a decade in his native Brazil.
Esteban Villa-Turek
Esteban Villa-Turek is a PhD student in the Media, Technology and Society program at Northwestern University, working with Prof. Erik Nisbet in his Center for Communication and Public Policy. He studies online disinformation with special attention to its policy implications, focusing on political and scientific disinformation in Latin America using applied data science and computational methods. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Law from Rosario University (Bogotá, 2014), a master’s degree in Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin, 2019) and is currently finishing a master’s in Analytics from Georgia Tech.
Kalia Vogelman-Natan
Kalia Vogelman-Natan is a PhD student in the Media, Technology, and Society program, working in the Center on Media and Human Development with Dr. Ellen Wartella. Her research interests focus on mobile communication and the role of media in the lives of families, specifically the impacts mobile ubiquity has on children, adolescents, and parenting. Kalia’s recent projects explore young children’s online video consumption, employing mixed methods to examine what children are watching on YouTube and other video streaming platforms, their viewing practices, and how these experiences impact children’s development and well-being. She holds a BA in International Relations with a minor in English Literature & Linguistics, and an MA in Communication from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Y. Jasmine Wu
jasminewu@u.northwestern.edu
Y. Jasmine Wu is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program, working in the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) research group led by Noshir Contractor. Her research interests include social network analysis, teamwork, and scientific collaboration She applies statistical tools to understand team processes from the network perspective in organizational settings to help improve management and team performance. Her current project focuses on intra-organizational network dynamics in the era of hybrid work. She graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Information Science and Communication. Her research has won Top Student Paper awards from International Communication Association and National Communication Association.
Erique Zhang
Erique Zhang (they/she) is a PhD candidate in Media, Technology, and Society. Their research lies at the intersections of trans studies, feminist media studies, queer and trans of color critique, and fashion studies. Their dissertation project uses a combination of data sources—including interviews and participatory workshops with trans women and femmes, transcripts of vlogs produced by trans female social media influencers, and fashion media coverage of trans subjects—to interrogate how normative beauty ideals are produced through media representations and how trans women and femmes navigate these norms in their everyday lives. Their work has been published in Studies in Costume & Performance, Fashion Studies Journal, International Journal of Communication, Feminist Media Studies, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies.