College of Media at Illinois

PhDs on the Market

PhDs: Update Your Information

 

 

John Anderson | jander26@illinois.edu
Previously a broadcast journalist, Anderson's doctoral research breaks new ground in the comprehensive and critical analysis of digital radio. He's been writing about media policy and the practice of media activism for 14 years. John remains involved in grassroots media practice, primarily through Champaign-Urbana's community radio stations, one of which he helped build. He also produced a mashup EP during his tenure at ICR. Anderson received his master's degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and his undergraduate honors degree from Valparaiso University. He finds teaching immensely rewarding.
Teaching Interests: Media law and policy; various aspects of journalism, including practice; remix culture; anything related to the development of critical and creative thinking skills.
Dissertation: Radio's Digital Dilemma: Broadcasting in the 21st Century
Adviser: John Nerone
Website: http://diymedia.net

 

Kevin Dolan | kdolan@illinois.edu
My research interests include critical whiteness studies, critical journalism studies, cultural and critical studies, and race and ethnic studies, and more specifically, the way the news media protect and bolster the racial status quo, particularly what I call the "incumbency of whiteness." I have more than fifteen years of experience working as a reporter, copy editor, and designer at daily newspapers. For my dissertation research I conducted an ethnographic study of two newspapers, a mid-sized daily in central California and a large metropolitan daily in the Midwest. The studies consisted of participant observation of daily news meetings and conversations between editors and reporters as well as working full time for five months at the Midwest daily. I also conducted semistructured one-on-one interviews with about sixty journalists to explore the degree to which whiteness is embedded in journalistic identifications and discourse. I have found that through such practices as focusing on institutions and avoiding the appearance of any bias, mainstream U.S. journalism consistently serves white racial interests by avoiding or marginalizing challenges to white incumbency.
Teaching Interests: I am well qualified to teach general courses such as news editing, U.S. journalism history, media ethics, media history, popular culture, and media and society. I also could teach more specific courses such as qualitative research methods, the sociology of news, race and ethnicity in popular culture, and whiteness in the media.
Prospective dissertation title: " Whiteness and News: The Interlocking Social Construction of 'Realities'"
Adviser: John Nerone

 

Dong Han | donghan@illinois.edu
His experience and research interests lie at the intersection of communication, political economy, and law. His PhD dissertation studies copyright and media in todays China, examining how changes in media policy, industrial structure, production practices, and market conditions relate to the development of clear and enforceable copyright. Specifically, how have copyright law and practice registered and been reshaped in the process of Chinese media reform, and how do they in return impinge on media production and market conditions? His work is the first to study the transformation of television production and labor relations in the context of copyright growth, and copyrights role in digital culture and creativity in China. He also has interests and publications in media history and issues of racialization and migrant labor. Before entering the PhD program, he worked for five years (1999-2004) as an attorney for China Central Television (CCTV), Chinas only national TV network and its leading media company.
Teaching Interests: Communication law and policy, Iintellectual property and the cultural industries, New media and technology, International communication, History and political economy of the media
Proposed dissertation title: "Copyright and communication in contemporary China"
Advisers: Dan Schiller, Robert W. McChesney, John Nerone, Yuezhi Zhao

 

Amy Hasinoff | ahasino2@illinois.edu

Amy Adele Hasinoff Hasinoff received her BA from McGill University. She is a doctoral fellow funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture. Her published work has appeared in Critical Studies in Media Communication and Feminist Media Studies. Her dissertation examines the journalistic, legal, and legislative responses to adolescent girls' sexual self-expression online (such as "sexting"). For more information, visit: www.amyhasinoff.com
Dissertation title: ""No right to sext? A critical examination of media and legal debates about teenage girls sexual agency in the digital age"
Advisors: Sarah Projansky and Paula Treichler

 

Kevin Healey | khealey2@illinois.edu
His research focuses on the intersection of media, religion, and culture. He has published research on media coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright; the application of Habermas and Ellul to issues of media concentration and minority ownership; and the concept of "prophetic" media critique. His work appears in Journal of Mass Media Ethics; Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies; Journal of Symbolic Interaction; the edited volume The Promise Keepers: Essays on Masculinity and Christianity; and the academic blog Kritik. He is currently preparing a chapter on media coverage of Sarah Palin for an upcoming three-volume series on evangelicals and popular culture from Praeger Press. Kevin has received fellowships from the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois and from the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. He is currently writing his dissertation, which focuses on the role of new media such as YouTube and blogs in public debates about religion and politics.
Dissertation title: "The Spirit of Networks: New Media and the Changing Role of Religion in American Public Life"
Adviser: Clifford Christians

 

Camille Johnson-Yale | camilleyale@gmail.com
Primary areas of research are critical media and cultural studies, with specific interests in media industries, transnational production and labor practices, new media and communication technologies, critical discourse analysis, and media history. Her work has appeared in the journals Critical Studies in Media Communication, the Journal of Popular Culture (forthcoming, 2011), The Internet and Higher Education, The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (forthcoming), and the edited collection America Reception Study (with Andrea Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). She was named one of the New Voices in Critical and Cultural Studies by the National Communication Association (2006).
Dissertation title: "Runaway Film Production: A Critical History of Hollywood's Outsourcing Discourse"
Adviser: John Nerone

 

Andrew Kennis | akennis2@illinois.edu
Andrew Kennis is a PhD candidate, an investigative journalist, an adjunct professor and a researcher in Political Communication, Digital Journalism Studies, Political Economy and International Communications. He defends his dissertation in fall 2010. As a professor, Andrew has designed and taught his own courses at Cal State University, William Paterson University (N.J.), the TEC de Monterrey (Mexico City) and here at Illinois. Andrew taught an undergrad seminar at Illinois last semester entitled, Media and Democracy. He also taught a course on media industries at Dominican University (Chicago) in the spring 2010 semester and is currently teaching Global Media & Online Journalism this fall semester. Similarly, Andrew also taught a seminar on digital journalism in Mexico City at the TEC. As a researcher, Andrew has investigated, written, and published in peer review journals ranging across three different disciplines (communications, political science and technology studies). He works with internationally renown scholars, such as John Nerone and Noam Chomsky. As a journalist, Andrew has practiced online-based / convergence reporting, investigative and print reporting, citizen journalism, and online-based and traditional radio throughout the last decade. He has written from locations ranging across four continents, including Chiapas, Japan, Israel, Venezuela, Taiwan, Guatemala, Quebec, Palestine and Mexico City. In addition to reporting and conducting research from abroad, Andrew also taught, lived in and reported from Mexico City and Chiapas for four years, where he obtained a level of spoken and written fluency in Spanish.
Dissertation title: The Media Dependence Model: An Analysis of the Performance and Structure of U.S. and Global News
Advisers: John Nerone and Noam Chomsky
Links: http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/andrew-kennis/person_view and http://www.google.com/profiles/andrew.kennis
Teaching and Research Specializations: Online Journalism, Investigative Reporting, Global Media, Political Communication, International Communications, Digital Journalism and Journalism Studies and Public Policy Studies on Technology & Communications

 

Owen Kulemeka | okuleme2@illinois.edu
Owen's research examines public relations campaigns that aim to improve crisis preparedness in communities that have experienced catastrophic disasters. He is currently studying public relations campaigns in post-tsunami Thailand and post-Katrina New Orleans. He is a 2009 Institute for Public Relations Fellow and a 2010 National Science Foundation-Public Entity Risk Institute Fellow. Prior to entering the PhD program, he worked in public relations at Weber Shandwick, the American Insurance Association, the United Nations, the O.E.C.D, and Kearney & Company. His website is: www.owendk.com.
Proposed dissertation title: "Public relations and crisis preparedness in post-disaster communities"
Advisers: William Berry, Michelle Nelson, Jeong-Nam Kim, Reginald Alston
Teaching interests: Public relations, social media, digital public relations, crisis communication, risk communication, public relations theory, campaign planning, public relations writing, public relations research methods

 

Robert Mejia | rmejia3@illinois.edu
My dissertation project, Playing the Crisis: Video Games and the Production of the Postmodern Subject, aims to understand how video games have worked to animate and mobilize remembrances of the past, the politics of the present, and the hopes and fears of the future, so as to produce the subjectivities necessary for sustaining present-day politics (as well as affect politics in the future). Considering that the video game industry is already and continues to more fully become a dominant media industry, my hope is that my dissertation and research more generally will speak to the needs of contemporary democracy. To this end, I plan to teach and develop introductory undergraduate and graduate level courses such as Mass Communication and Society, Media Criticism, New Media, and the Political Economy of Media as well as upper level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars focused on my area of specialization. Such courses could focus on the political economy of the video game industry and/or video games as a historical form; as well as the relationship between technology and culture more generally.
Teaching Interests: Cultural Studies; Game Studies; Gender & Women Studies; Media History; Media Studies; Memory Studies; New Media; Political Economy of the Media; Race & Ethnicity Studies; Technology Studies
Prospective dissertation title: Playing the Crisis: Video Games and the Production of the Postmodern Subject
Adviser: Kent Ono

 

Sangdo Oh | sangoh@illinois.edu
My research focuses on two areas. First, my dissertation project is examining the concept of implicit consumer cognition. I study how the knowledge consumers have but are not aware of can affect their evaluation of sustainable products. I am also studying consumers beliefs regarding their ability to positively affect the environment through consumption. In the second area of my research, I work on two projects that analyze the process of visual attention and inhibition: how the information consumers ignore at one point can influence how they perceive the information later.
Proposed Dissertation Title: "Why go green? To save this planet? Or to save your ego?"
Advisers: Patrick T. Vargas, Michelle R. Nelson, Madhubalan Viswanathan, Sukki Yoon
Teaching Interests: Consumer Behavior, Marketing Research Methods, Integrated Marketing Communication, Psychology of Advertising, Advertising and Persuasion, Consumer Information Processing

 

Veronica Pomata | vpomata2@illinois.edu
The main research interest is based on the intersection between race, class and popular culture through the perspectives of children in Argentina. Specifically, my dissertation looks at children's interpretations of the lack of diverse racial representations in television today. Other research interests include the socio-cultural aspects of advertising and consumer culture.
Teaching interests: Advertising and Consumer Culture, Childhood Studies, Qualitative Research Methods. As an instructor, I have taught "The Socio-Cultural Aspects of Advertising" (ADV 493) in four different occasions.
Proposed dissertation title: "From 'Senorita Maestra' to 'Patito Feo': A cultural study on Children, Popular Culture and Race in Argentina"
Adviser: Isabel Molina-Guzman

 

Maritza Quinones-Rivera | quinones@indiana.edu
Quinones-Rivera's research interests are in media representations of otherness in mainstream media and popular culture; media roles on diasporic cultures in the U.S., Latin America, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean; popular culture; ethnic identities; and gender. Quinones-Rivera is a recipient of the University of Illinois Summer Predoctoral Program (2003) and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (2004/2005). Before coming to Illinois, she held a professional position as communications manager (1999-2003) for the Office of the Vice President for Student Development and Diversity at Indiana University. In addition, she held the position of assistant executive director (1994-1999) for a historical African-American organization of nine fraternities and sororities, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc., also at Indiana University. Currently she is a board member for the alumni association at Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science (2002-present). She is also a student member of the National Communication Association, the Afro-Latin/American Research Association, the Latin American Studies Association and the Cultural Studies Association.
Dissertation title: "Mediating Blackness: Black Puerto Rican Women and Popular Culture"
Adviser: Isabel Molina-Guzman

 

Dennis Redmond | redmond2@illinois.edu
My research focuses on contemporary videogame culture as one of the premier transnational media of our day. I'm especially interested in the ways videogames provide a space where a range of established mass media and emergent digital media some based in industrialized countries, others rooted in developing nations all converge. Indeed, videogames are no longer monopolies of First World culture-industries. They have profound and pervasive links to the institutions of the digital commons (e.g. franchises, fan communities, file-sharing and open source software production), to the booming media-systems and vast digital publics of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China), and to fast-growing flows of postcolonial media (emergent national and regional media cultures in South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Eurasia). My dissertation project uses the concepts and tools of transnational cultural studies and communications theory to map out these institutions, audiences and flows, in the context of two landmark productions of contemporary videogame culture, Hideo Kojima's "Metal Gear Solid 4" (2008) and Square Enix' "Final Fantasy 12" (2006).
More information: dennisredmond.com/Uplink.html
Prospective dissertation title: "One Neoliberalism, Many Resistances: Videogames as Transnational Media"
Advisers: Angharad Valdivia, Lisa Nakamura, Isabel Molina, Antoinette Burton
Teaching and Research Specializations: Videogames as a mass media, an industry, and a culture; digital media; the digital commons; media cultures of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the context of the 21st century developmental state; emergent media-systems of the postcolonial nations (including regional media cultures in South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Eurasia)