Published on January 18th, 2017

Lisa Parks
DirectorLisa Parks is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She is a global media scholar whose research focuses on satellite technologies and media cultures; critical studies of media infrastructures; and media, militarization and surveillance.

Diego Cerna Aragon
Research AssistantDiego Cerna Aragon is a first-year graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. His research interests include discourse analysis, expert knowledge, digital media, and online interactions.

Iago Bojczuk
Research AssistantIago Bojczuk is a Lemann Fellow and a second-year graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. His research interests include global media, ICT4D, human-computer interaction, education, and mobile media in Brazil.

Meng Liang
Visiting Graduate StudentMeng Liang is a visiting graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT and a PhD candidate at University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on mobile Internet and telecommunication history in China.

Han Su
Research AssistantHan Su is a second-year graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. He has a background in human-computer interaction and NLP. His current research focuses on the quantification of cultural capital, and the global streaming project.

Zahra Thabet
UROPZahra a UROP in GMTaC for the fall semester. She is a sophomore at Wellesley College where she majors in economics with an intended double major in sociology. Her research interests span the intersecting topics of law, privacy, and how institutions make and enact policy.

Kelly Wagman
Research AssistantKelly Wagman is a first-year graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Her research interests include feminist technoscience, human-machine communication, and design.

Alan Zhang
Affiliate Graduate StudentAlan Zhang is a 2nd year PhD student in Work and Organization Studies at MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on visual technologies in work.
MIT Faculty Affiliates

Ian Condry
Ian Condry is a cultural anthropologist and author. He graduated from Harvard University in 1987 with a B.A. in Government and received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University in 1999. He is currently a Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Paloma Duong
Paloma Duong’s research focuses on the intersection of culture and politics in 20th and 21st century Latin America. She is currently writing about democratic imaginaries, new media, and participatory forms of culture in post-Cold War Cuba, including blogs, performances, and music. Her work and her teaching draw from cultural studies, political philosophy, and literary and media theory to examine the aesthetic dimensions of citizenship, and the history and reception of Marxism, in Latin America.

Jing Wang
Jing Wang is Professor of Chinese Media and Cultural Studies at MIT. Her research focuses on the impact of new media on commercial communication (as in advertising and marketing) and civic communication (as in social-media powered activism).
Former Research Assistants

Matt Graydon
Former Research AssistantMatt Graydon is an alumnus of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and researcher. His current work examines the evolution and impact of influence operations, with a focus on Russia.

Gabriel Pereira
Visiting Graduate StudentGabriel Pereira was a visiting graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, and a PhD fellow at Aarhus University (Denmark). His research focuses on critical studies of data infrastructures.

Rachel Thompson
Research AssistantRachel Thompson is an alumna of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Her research interrogates the ethics of American incarceration media. She is now a student at UC Berkeley Law School.

Vicky Zeamer
Former Research AssistantVicky Zeamer graduated from the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT in 2018. Her research explored how computing and digital media are changing the ways users experience food. She is now employed at Ideo in San Francisco.
Current Research Collaborators

Basil Hamusokwe
Basil Hamusokwe is a lecturer and researcher in media and communication studies at the University of Zambia. His research interests are in the political economy of the media; political communication and; media ownership, sustainability, and regulation.

Jennifer Holt
Jennifer Holt is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in the areas of media industry studies, policy and regulation, and digital media.

Carlos Jimenez
Carlos Jimenez is Assistant Professor of Media, Film and Journalism at the University of Denver. His research examines the role of media (mobile phones, social media, community radio, and automated harvesters) in the everyday lives of immigrant farmworkers in Oxnard, California.

Joseph W. Matiko
Joseph W. Matiko is a Lecturer and a Director of the India-Tanzania Centre of Excellence in ICT at the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, in Tanzania. His research interests include wireless sensors, energy harvesting for low power communications, and skills development in digital technologies.

Emo de Medeiros
Emo de Medeiros is a interdisciplinary artist, whose work spans across video, sculpture, photography, textile, music and performance art. He lives and works in Cotonou, Benin and Paris.

Laila Shereen Sakr
Laila Shereen Sakr is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies and Faculty Affiliate in Feminist Studies and Middle East Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ramesh Srinivasan
Ramesh Srinivasan studies the relationship between technology, politics, and societies across the world. He is a faculty member at UCLA in the Information Studies and Design|Media Arts departments and is the founder of the UC-wide Digital Cultures Lab.