CORE FACULTY
ALEX HALAVAIS
Associate Professor
Social Data Science
Halavais researches ways in which automation and datafication change the nature of learning and allow for new forms of creative collaboration and self-government.
NICK PROFERES
Assistant Professor
Social Data Science
Proferes’s research interests include users’ understandings of socio-technical systems such as social media, societal discourse about technology, and issues of power and ethics in the digital landscape.
SETH RACHLIN
Assistant Teaching Professor
Social Data Science
Leveraging his academic training as a political and historical sociologist, Rachlin investigates the connection between innovations in information technology and social, political, and economic change across the world.
SHAWN WALKER
Assistant Professor
Social Data Science
Walker’s research focuses on two complementary areas: 1) new forms of political participation emerging on social media platforms and 2) the related challenges of collecting, analyzing, and working with data from these platforms.
AFFILIATE FACULTY
PAULINE HOPE CHEONG
Professor
Communication
Cheong studies the complex interactions between communication technologies and different cultural communities around the world. She believes that invisible yet powerful cultural and communicative forces make up how we interact and organize with digital media, to impact participation and power in society.
KELLEY COTTER
External Faculty
Pennsylvania State University
Cotter’s work broadly concerns how algorithms shape possibilities for participation in social, cultural, and political life on online platforms. She is particularly interested in the intersection of algorithmic power and algorithmic literacy—how individuals learn about and make sense of algorithms, as well as how they mobilize this insight to (re)configure power relations mediated by algorithms.
MARISA DUARTE
Associate Professor
Justice & Social Inquiry
Duarte researches problems of information, knowledge, and technology in Native American and Indigenous contexts. For example, her most recent work examines tensions between wearable technologies, privacy, and well-being among marginalized peoples, specifically among Indigenous and Mexican American women.
NICHOLAS DURAN
Associate Professor
Psychology
Duran studies complex cognitive processes as revealed in the dynamics of movement and language, both within individuals and across dyads and groups.
ED FINN
Associate Professor
Science & the Imagination
Finn’s research and teaching explore digital narratives, creative collaboration, and the intersection of the humanities, arts and sciences.
SARAH FLORINI
Associate Professor
Film & Media Studies
Florini’s research focuses on the intersection of emerging media, Black American cultural production, and racial politics.
DAWN GILPIN
Associate Professor
Journalism & Mass Com
Gilpin’s research interests focus on the interactions between organizations, media and public policy, particularly in terms of organizational and issue identity, and the dynamics of knowledge and power.
K. HAZEL KWON
Associate Professor
Journalism & Mass Com
Kwon’s research centers on social technologies with an emphasis on the dynamics in which networked environment influences audience engagement, collective sense-making, emotional contagion and news diffusion.
KATHLEEN PINE
Assistant Professor
College of Health Solutions
Pine’s research centers on data practices: the situated social, technical, and organizational practices through which data are created, managed, and deployed, as well as the social and organizational implications of digital information technologies in the realms of healthcare and community health.
MICHAEL SIMEONE
Associate Research Professor
Complex Adaptive Systems
Simeone’s research includes multidisciplinary data science, post-cybernetic culture and technology, analysis of human-technology networks, data visualization, and data-driven collaborations that bridge environmental sciences and humanities.
VINCE WALDRON
Professor
Communication
Waldron’s research considers both face-to-face and technology-mediated forms of communication and he frequently partners with colleagues in allied disciplines such as social work, aging studies and psychology.
GREG WISE
Professor
Communication
Wise’s research interests focus on popular culture, technology and culture, new media, globalization, and surveillance.
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