Annenberg Welcomes Visiting Scholars and Postdoctoral Fellows for 2023-24

With the kickoff of the 2023-24 academic year, the Annenberg School and its centers are pleased to welcome many new scholars who will be in residence for all or part of this year. Please welcome them!

Visiting Scholars

Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication (C3)

Natalie Fenton is a Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. Fenton researches the role the media play in the formation of identities and democracies and why and how people seek to change the world for socially progressive ends.

Professor in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Alison Hearn’s research focuses on the intersections of digital media, promotional culture, self-presentation, the credit economy, and emerging forms of work.

Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC)

Danna Young (Ph.D. ‘07) is a Professor of Communication at the University of Delaware, researching political media effects, media psychology, public opinion and the psychology of misinformation. This fall, she will be a part-time visiting scholar at APPC — spending several days a week at the center.

Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC)

A filmmaker and associate professor in Media Studies and Production at Temple University, Wazhmah Osman is a visiting scholar at CARGC and the Center for Media at Risk.

Center for Media at Risk

Wazhmah Osman (see CARGC above)

Yoel Roth (Ph.D. ‘16) is the Knight Visiting Scholar at the Center for Media at Risk. He is a trust and safety practitioner and researcher focused on developing policy and technology approaches to the sustainable and trustworthy governance of social media and emerging technologies.

Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS)

Mads Skovgaard is a Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and a visiting scholar at CDCS. Skovgaard’s research investigates the many ways that activists in social movements around the world use digital technologies in contentious political activities.

SAFELab

In September, the SAFELab is welcoming an artist-in-residence, Pierre-Christophe Gam, who will be joining the lab to work on TOGUNA, a virtual reality experience dedicated to rituals around dreaming.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC)

Riana Brown is a Joan Bossert Postdoctoral Research Fellow at APPC and the Social Action Lab. Her research explores how people respond to evidence of inequality, both understanding the ways people seek to address it and ways people defend it, while considering people’s multiple group memberships.

Alon Kraitzman is the Howard Deshong Postdoctoral Fellow at APPC and the Social Action Lab. His research focuses on comparative politics, political behavior, public opinion, and political institutions.

Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM)

Eryn Campbell is the Gloria T. and Melvin J. (“Jack”) Chisum Postdoctoral Research Fellow at APPC and the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM). Her research interests broadly include engaging key stakeholders in advocacy for climate action, media and social influences on public perceptions of climate change, climate and health messaging strategies, and communicating climate mitigation and adaptation measures.

Lauren Lutzke is the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at APPC and PCSSM. With a background in psychology and environmental studies, her interdisciplinary research broadly focuses on judgements and decisions people make in relation to the issue of climate change.

Alyssa (Allie) Sinclair is a Joan Bossert Postdoctoral Fellow at APPC, the Communication Neuroscience Lab, and PCSSM. Her research interests include knowledge and belief updating, learning from error, risk communication, information seeking and sharing, and misinformation correction.

Annenberg School for Communication

Postdoctoral Fellow Yue Li will be working with Gerald R. Miller Professor Emeritus of Communication Joseph N. Cappella on the Message Effects Project. Li uses theory-driven computational methods to addresses how health-related (mis)information diffuses across news media and individuals on social media.

Recent Annenberg graduate Florence Madenga (Ph.D. ‘23) is the newest George Gerbner Fellow. She explores the evolution and boundaries of journalism, media, identity, and power as they pertain to expanding and/or contracting globalization through multi-modal methods and decolonial frameworks.

Matt Parker is the incoming Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Fellow. Parker is an artist and a Research Fellow in the Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University. His multimedia works are influenced by the practice of listening to unsound vibratory ecologies and the economies of noise.

Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC)

CARGC postdoctoral fellow Zehra Husain is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on media, race and popular culture in coastal South Asia and the Indian Ocean. 

Sandeep Mertia is a postdoctoral fellow at CARGC and the Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS). His research focuses on the socio-technical constitution and mediation of global and planetary digital futures, particularly in postcolonial and global South contexts. 

Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS)

CDCS postdoctoral fellow Jingyi Gu examines the prehistories and afterlives of data-intensive systems through topics like social media data deletion and the politics of digital memory.

Sandeep Mertia (see CARGC above)

Mohammed Rashid is a postdoctoral fellow at CDCS. His research lies at the intersection of global digital media, South Asian queer media cultures, and enclave media activism.

Communication Neuroscience Lab

Alyssa (Allie) Sinclair (see PCSSM above)

Health Community & Equity Lab

Jiaxi Wu is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Health Community & Equity Lab. Wu studies communication strategies for promoting positive health attitudes and behavioral changes. She is also interested in examining the effects of online health messages on individuals' attitudes, behaviors, and decision-making processes.

Polarization Research Lab

Xanni Brown is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Polarization Research Lab. She studies drivers of anti-democratic attitudes and political polarization in the United States, with a specific focus on racial attitudes and reactions to increasing racial and gender diversity.

SAFELab

Javier Garcia-Perez is a postdoctoral fellow at the SAFELab. His research focuses on improving the quality of life for LGBTQ+ and Latinx communities across lifespans.

Social Action Lab

Riana Brown (see APPC above)

Alon Kraitzman (see APPC above)