About Us
Wulan Widyasari
Wulan Widyasari is a doctoral student at the Medienpädagogik/Bildungsinformatik, Institute of Education, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany. Her current research interests are focusing on online media, mass media, media literacy, journalism, diversity and sexuality. She is also a lecturer for communication and media in Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Summer Hamilton
Summer Hamilton is a doctoral candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her dissertation research focuses on race and housing in African American literature. She is also a member of the Upper School English Faculty at The Hockaday School in Dallas, Texas.
Emmanuel Dabo
PhD student in communication studies at the Catholic University of West Africa in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, his researches are focused on social media and sociopolitical change in Côte d'Ivoire. For his MSc, he analyzed the Ivorian blog ecosystem in order to identify the main resons people use blog in Côte d'Ivoire. Based upon the results got, Emmanuel Dabo is cuurently looking at how online activism participates in the policy agenda building in Côte d'Ivoire.
Tatiana Bryant
Tatiana is an Assistant Professor and Librarian at Adelphi University. She holds a MPA from NYU and a MSLIS from Pratt Institute.
Tarcizio Silva
Tarcízio Silva is currently pursuing his PhD in Social Sciences and Humanities at the Federal University of ABC (Brazil) and is a cofounder and Researcher at IBPAD - Brazilian Institute of Research and Data Analysis. His past professional and academic experience focused on social media data research, ranging from "social listening" services for digital agencies to controversies detection about public issues and policies. The doctorate thesis in development investigates racialization on digital algorithms and social media platforms. He also teaches digital methods, social media network analysis, social listening and text analysis.
Waliya, Yohanna Joseph
Waliya Yohanna Joseph is a Nigerian digital Poet, Novelist and Playwright. He writes in English and French. Among his works are: La révolte de vie (play), Monde 2.0 (play), Hégémonie Disparue (novel), Quand l'Afrique se lèvera (novel), and Les dieux et leurs subalternes ont tort (collection of poems) etc. He is a Graduate Assistant in the Department of Modern Languages and Translation Studies, University of Calabar, Nigeria. Currently, he is writing a short electronic novel titled "Ekang".
Taís Oliveira
Oliveria is a student in the master course at UFABC (Federal University of ABC region, Brazil) in Social Science and Humanities and student in Specialization in Culture, Education and Ethnic-races Relations at USP (University of São Paulo). Oliveria's research is about black entrepreneurship on social networks and the purpose is to approach the discussion about work as well as education of the black people and approach to other interdisciplinary topics such as identity, racism and digital communities.
DeLisa D. Hawkes
DeLisa D. Hawkes is a Ph.D. candidate and academic advisor in the English Department at the University of Maryland College Park. In her dissertation, “The Problem of the Prism: Colorism, Racial Passing, and the Politics of Racial Visibility,” DeLisa argues that nineteenth and early-twentieth century African American writer-activists rework racist and colorist ideologies into black nationalist thought that sought to uplift the race and challenge the normalizing of white supremacy. She has a forthcoming publication in the summer 2019 North Carolina Literary Review. Her research and teaching interests include nineteenth and early-twentieth century African American and American literatures, law and literature, history and literature, race and ethnicity studies, gender and sexuality, and visual culture. When she is not teaching or conducting archival research, DeLisa volunteers at a food pantry in Prince George’s County, MD. DeLisa earned her MA in English from North Carolina Central University and her BA in History - Teacher Education and English from North Carolina State University. Follow her on Twitter @DeLisaDHawkes.
Susanna Sacks
Susanna Sacks received her Ph. D. in English from Northwestern University in April 2019 and will be Assistant Professor of English at the College of Wooster from August 2019. At Northwestern, Susanna co-founded the Digital Humanities Pedagogy Workshop, which supported graduate student instructors in the development of digital humanities skills and pedagogical practices. Her research investigates how digital platforms inform African art worlds. Her dissertation project examined the influence of digital media publication on the relationship between poetic form and community formation in southeastern Africa. Building on eighteen months of archival and ethnographic research, the project maps the interactions between embodied and digital literary performances, institutions, and aesthetic forms online and at protests, poetry slams, and international arts festivals. Articles based on this research are forthcoming with Research in African Literatures and in the volume Digital Technology and Languages in African Communities and Classrooms: Innovations and Opportunities.
Lavonda Kay Broadnax
Corrie Claiborne
Previously a professor at Auburn University and Claflin University, Corrie Claiborne is currently an Associate professor of English and American Literature at Morehouse College. She received her undergraduate degree in English from Syracuse University, an M.A. in English from the University of South Carolina, and a doctorate from The Ohio State University. In 2010, she partnered with the Myrtle Beach Museum of Art and the Richland County Library in Columbia, SC to deliver a series of lectures about the similarities between the Quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama and the cultural artifacts of the South Carolina Low Country. She is also currently working on an edited collection with Samuel Livingston entitled Framing Gullah Geechee Culture: an Interdisciplinary Approach. In addition to serving on numerous university and community committees, in 2013 Dr. Claiborne and Dr. Jamila Lyn developed a service learning project with the Morehouse Bonner Office of Community Service entitled "Re-imagining Black Masculinity, Ending Sexual Violence” and in 2017 they published a journal article under the same title. This project looked at ways to get students to discuss the images of men in the media and to mentor younger men to change their actions surrounding violence in their communities. In 2009, she was awarded a UNCF/Mellon Fellowship at Harvard University.
Allissa Richardson
Dr. Allissa V. Richardson is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School.
She researches how African Americans use mobile and social media to produce innovative forms of journalism— especially in times of crisis. Additionally, Dr. Richardson investigates the historic contributions of the black press, examining specifically the intersections of advocacy journalism, black social movements and Critical Race Theory.
Dr. Richardson is the author of the forthcoming book, Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism (Oxford University Press). The text explores the lives of 15 mobile journalist-activists who documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only their smartphones and Twitter, from 2014 to 2018.
Dr. Richardson’s research is informed by her award-winning work as an instructor and journalist. She is considered a pioneer in mobile journalism, having launched the first smartphone-only college newsroom in 2010. The MOJO Lab, based on the campus of Morgan State University in Baltimore, was the only American college to boast such a program at the time.
Dr. Richardson expanded the MOJO Lab curriculum throughout the continent of Africa, creating classes for allied nonprofit organizations in Morocco and South Africa. The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) said Richardson empowered her students around the globe “to speak truth to power using new media.” NABJ recognized her as its 2012 Journalism Educator of the Year for her international work. Apple, Inc. inducted Dr. Richardson into its elite Distinguished Educator program for her innovative uses of its products the following year. Dr. Richardson is a recipient of the prestigious Harvard University Nieman Foundation Visiting Journalism Fellowship too.
Dr. Richardson holds a Ph.D. in Journalism Studies from the University of Maryland College Park; a Master's Degree in Magazine Publishing from Northwestern University's Medill School; and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Xavier University of Louisiana, where she was named a “Top 40 Under 40” alumna.
Maya Iverson
Iverson is an interdisciplinary thinker whose work spans media, critical archival, and critical race studies. Iverson is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California Santa Cruz working on a dissertation that thinks about television as a teleportation device. When not reading or writing for dissertation work, Iverson makes art to remind [myself] that creativity is the basis of building new worlds.
Staci Jones
Staci Jones is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She deploys critical race theory to explore the intersections of power and race through identity, rhetoric and performativity. Part of her ongoing research observes how people negotiate the discursive and material practices of identity formation and questions if identity affirming spaces (such as HBCUs, Latinx Student Associations, LGBTQ organizations, online spaces, etc.,) lead to greater happiness, self-efficacy and life success for marginalized group individuals.
Isioma Maureen Chiluwa
Isioma Maureen Chiluwa is an
Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Languages and General Studies, Covenant University Ota, Nigeria. Her research interests include discourses of online deception including discourse of scams mails, Ponzi schemes and fake news. Her works also covers discourse of online civic engagements especially those of social movements, hashtags and online activism. Isioma Chiluwa is presently pursuing her doctoral program at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.