Ph.D. Program Student Bios

2000 Cohort
2001 Cohort
2002 Cohort
2003 Cohort
2004 Cohort
2005 Cohort
2006 Cohort
2007 Cohort
2008 Cohort
2009 Cohort
Alumni

2000 Cohort

Hawley Johnson
Hawley Johnson’s research interests include nationalism and journalism’s role in democratization processes, post-conflict reconstruction, and transitional societies. From 2000-2004 she was the Associate Director of the Media and Conflict Resolution Program at New York University’s Department of Journalism where she managed a series of grants from the U.S. Department of State to improve reporting on human rights and diversity issues in Southeastern Europe. In cooperation with COI she is currently working on a study which will analyze the capacity of local media development NGOs in Southeastern Europe to become self-sustaining through organizational innovation and the formation of local and transnational networks. Her dissertation research explores the impact of media development policies in the former Yugoslavia. She received a B.A. cum laude from the American University School of International Service, an M.I.A. from the School of International and Public Affairs and a Harriman Certificate from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.

2001 Cohort

Joe Cutbirth
Joe Cutbirth studies the interplay of traditional journalism and so-called "fake news" in presidential politics. His research examines how the political narrative crafted from the longstanding relationship between political professionals and political reporters coexists with the para-political satire of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and others. He is a former news reporter and political writer for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram and communications director for the Texas Democratic Party, and worked for Texas Gov. Ann Richards' 1994 campaign and the Clinton-Gore 1996/Texas Democratic Party coordinated campaign. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and a master's degree in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown University. He teaches journalism and mass communications at Columbia and New York Universities and offers what is believed to be the first class specifically on the topic of "fake news" at NYU and The New School.

John Kelly
John Kelly's research interests include design processes and the development of content for interactive television and mobile devices. During his twelve years as a sound designer and producer of film, music, video and digital effects, Kelly focused on the innovative adaptation of emerging digital technologies to the demands of professional media production. In 1995, he became Director of Digital Media for Columbia's School of the Arts, with the responsibility of integrating digital tools into the school's graduate programs in Film, Visual Arts, Theatre and Writing. That year he led the Film division to become the first graduate program in the nation to make nonlinear technologies part of basic training and helped the Visual Arts program make digital arts part of its core curriculum. In 1996, Kelly created the school's curriculum for interactive media, establishing Interactive Design as the school's newest area of study. In 1999, he shifted his focus from teaching to research, joining IDL to help develop the formal study of Interactive Design. Kelly received his B.A. from Columbia University.
— Kelly, Fisher, Smith (2005) "Debate, Division, and Diversity: Political Discourse Networks in USENET Groups." Working paper for: Stanford Online Deliberation Conference, 2005

2002 Cohort

Karina Alexanyan
Karina Alexanyan is a Ph.D. candidate in communications at Columbia University in the City of New York.  Her doctoral research explores the Russian-language Internet, blogosphere and social networking universe.

Alexanyan is currently a researcher and blogger for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and a blogger for the international research group Russian Cyberspace.  Her publications include a chapter on Russian bogging in “International Blogging – Identity, Politics and Networked Publics”, edited by Russel and Echchaibi (Peter Lang, 2009), as well as an article on Russian social networking in the forthcoming issue of the Russian Cyberspace Journal.  Alexanyan is also co-editor of a forthcoming issue on the RuNet for the Russian Analytical Digest. In 2008, with the support of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Columbia’s Harriman Institute, Alexanyan organized the “Russia Online” Conference at Columbia University, brining together scholars and practitioners from Russia, the U.S. and Europe.

Alexanyan received her M.Phil from Columbia University, has a M.A. in communication from NYU and a B.A. in linguistics and modern languages (French and Russian) from the Claremont Colleges.  She is the recipient of the John N. Hazard (2009) and Pepsico (2006) fellowships from the Harriman Institute at Columbia.

Philip Kay
Philip Kay’s research interests include newspaper coverage and popular narratives of urban schools and youth; the metropolitan, student, ethnic, and alternative press; and journalism education. His dissertation, “Guttersnipes and Eliterates: City College in the Popular Imagination,” is a study of “the poor man’s Harvard” as cultural icon and perennial site of social conflict. He is currently the journalism program director and an assistant professor in the City College of New York’s department of Media & Communication Arts.

From 2000 to 2004 Kay was director of education programs at the New York Council for the Humanities. For most of the 1990s he was editor of the monthly magazine New Youth Connections (circ. 80,000). He has published three book-length collections of writing by New York City high schools students including Things Get Hectic: Teens Write About the Violence That Surrounds Them (Simon & Schuster, 1998) and Starting With ‘I’: Personal Essays by Teenagers (Persea Books, 1997). He holds an M. Phil. in Communications from Columbia University, where, in 1994-95, he was also a Revson Fellow on the Future of the City of New York. In addition, he has an M.A. in Latin American Civilization and a B.A. in Dramatic Literature, Theatre History, and Cinema, both from NYU.

Jane E. Turk
Jane E. Turk's research interests include the history of media institutions and media regulation, the intersection of mass media and commercial/consumer culture, and the relationship between mass media and democracy. Turk’s ongoing dissertation research examines the development of noncommercial media institutions in the United States, a country in which broadcasting was firmly established as a commercial enterprise. In her research, she approaches NPR as a double-articulated media network – both a network of production and content-distribution centers, and a network of particular subject positions and ideologies—and focuses specifically on the ways in which the network of NPR has transformed from its initial roots as a public-service educational initiative into a niche mass media brand.

Turk has designed and taught courses on critical media and cultural studies, media literacy, journalism and media history, mass communication, and communication theory. She has taught at Hunter College (New York, NY), Marymount College Manhattan (New York, NY), Lake Forest College (Lake Forest, IL), and DePaul University (Chicago, IL). She currently resides in Chicago, and can be contacted at jet2015[at]columbia.edu.

2003 Cohort

Joost van Dreunen
Joost van Dreunen is currently wrapping up his Ph.D. dissertation, which explores video games as an entryway to contemporary media culture. He is an affiliate researcher at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, a member of the Center of Organizational Innovation, founder of the New York chapter of the Digital Game Research Association, and teaches at the NYU Game Center.

Outside academia, Joost is a managing director at SuperData Research, which specializes in due diligence research on entertainment media and consumer technologies. Joost has over a decade of commercial research experience on the video game industry and new media projects, and previously worked as analyst for Nielsen Buzzmetrics and DFC Intelligence. He specializes in emergent forms of game play, including casual gaming, free-to-play gaming, micro-transactions, MMOs, mobile gaming, and digital distribution. Most recently, he wrote a primer on the business model for iPhone application developers and a white paper on the trading card game industry.

Sasha Meltzer
Sasha Meltzer’s primary focus is on the interplay between news, narrative and myth in civic life. She is particularly interested in the relationship between scandal, "infotainment," fear mongering and public policy. She holds a B.A. in History from Columbia University. She has worked at WNYC, the New York City affiliate of National Public Radio, and at The Commonwealth Club, a public affairs forum in San Francisco.

Olivier Sylvain
Olivier Sylvain is interested in communications policy and democratic theory. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Fordham University where he teaches telecommunications law and administrative law. He is also a doctoral candidate in the communications program at Columbia University where he is completing research on the political development of the Radio Act of 1927. At Columbia, Olivier taught a two-semester undergraduate “core” course on “Contemporary Civilization,” which included close readings of texts in ethics, political economy, and social theory.

For three years before entering academia, Olivier was a litigation associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Jenner & Block, LLC. There, he primarily worked on a variety of constitutional law and telecommunications related matters, including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court bearing on national security, the death penalty, and the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Before Jenner, Olivier was the Marvin Karpatkin Fellow in the National Legal Office of the American Civil Liberties Union where he principally worked on civil rights and educational equity related matters.

Before attending law school, Olivier worked in publishing and film. He did his undergraduate studies at Williams College. He earned his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and has received an M. Phil from Columbia University.

2004 Cohort

2005 Cohort

Daniel Lucas Graves
Lucas Graves’s research interests lie at the intersection of media technology, political communications, and news; a main question is the contention over potentially disruptive media forms and practices. As both reporter and analyst Lucas has covered media and technology for more than a decade, with a particular emphasis on digital music and movies, mobile devices and applications, and Latin American markets. He's worked for various publications and research firms, including Jupiter Research; today he writes regularly for Wired magazine. Lucas received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and an M.S. from Columbia's School of Journalism.

Danielle Haas
Danielle's interests include exploring international journalistic practices and reporting during the recent ‘Intifada’ its ramifications and how it compares to local reporting. She examines issues and struggles that are constantly at play for these journalists, the difficulties associated with personally living and experiencing one side of the conflict while seeking to maintain objectivity and professional sensitivity to the other, and the crucial bearing these issues have on understanding the media’s portrayal of the situation.

Benjamin Peters
Benjamin's dissertation "How Information Became Computer-Compatible in Cold War Cybernetics and Social Sciences" examines how contemporary communication keywords, especially information, became computer-compatible in the context of cold war cybernetics. It critically reexamines the rise and diffusion of cybernetics in international contexts, ending with why Soviet cybernetics failed to build an ARPANET-equivalent, in effort to better understand how the work of computers entered the modern imagination for communication. A Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, Benjamin also holds an MA from Stanford University and a BA, magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University, and enjoys life with his young family in Manhattan. Occasional publications, papers, and notes can be found here.

Zohar Kadmon Sella
Zohar Kadmon Sella is currently interested in mass-mediated terrorism, investigating the media presence of terrorism victims in their capacity as political pressure groups. Her paper “Terrorism Victims and the Media: Moral Authority as a Decisive Factor in Victims’ Media Treatment” won the 2006 New York State Communication Association Best Graduate Paper Award. Zohar is the former general counsel for the Israeli television network Keshet Broadcasting, Ltd. A graduate of the Tel Aviv University Law School, Zohar earned an MA in Media Studies from Stanford University and clerked for the Honorable Justice Theodore Or, Deputy Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court.

2006 Cohort

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
My work focus on participation in and through practices of communication. My dissertation research is ethnographic participant-observation focusing on the wider ramifications of political campaigns mobilizing people on a large scale to use personal contact as a form of political communication, working through things like canvassing and phone banking. I have also written on letters to the editor, blogging, and other formats of participatory communication. Abstractly, my interest can be parcelled out in the areas of social theory, political participation, and mediating institutions. My background includes jobs in administration, teaching, and editing, and studies at the University of Copenhagen (B.A., M.A.), University of Essex (MA), and the New School for Social Research (visiting student). More information can be found at rasmuskleisnielsen.net.

Ruth Palmer
Ruth Palmer’s research interests include the performing arts in the media, public perception of creative non-fiction, and ethics in journalism with emphasis on interviewing. She holds a B.A. in comparative literature from Bryn Mawr College. Before beginning her graduate studies she worked in the Artistic Department at the Metropolitan Opera.

2007 Cohort

Jonah Bossewitch
Jonah is a part-time doctoral candidate who also works full-time as a technical architect for Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL). He is investigating the politics of memory, surveillance, and transparency and their intersection with corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. Jonah has over a decade of experience as a professional software developer and is an active free software contributor. He completed an MA in Communication and Education at Teachers College (’07) and graduated from Princeton University (’97) with a BA Cum Laude in Philosophy and certificates in Computer Science and Cognitive Studies. He blogs at alchemicalmusings.org.

Katherine Brown
Katherine is researching the intersection of global and domestic public opinion, media, and U.S. foreign policy. Professionally, she has worked at the White House under the Clinton and Bush administrations: from 2000-2001 as a Presidential Scheduling Coordinator and from 2002-2003 as an assistant to the National Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor. From 2003-2004, Katherine spent a year advising on communications and public events at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, for which she was awarded a State Department Superior Honor Award. Through her roles with the NGOs Operation Smile and The Asia Foundation, she has worked throughout Asia, most recently advising on media-related issues in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. She is a New Ideas Fund Fellow, Truman National Security Fellow, and holds the 2009 Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing from Columbia’s Journalism School. Katherine has a B.A. in International Affairs from The George Washington University and an M.A. in Communications from Columbia University.

Annie Rudd
Annie Rudd is interested in the intersection of visuality and the news, the representational and aesthetic questions that the commingling of image and 'fact' invite, and the historical and cultural contingency of people's attitudes toward this interface. Much of her work to date has engaged with early photojournalism and social reform in New York City. She holds an Honours B.A. with high distinction from Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where she specialized in English Literature, Book and Media Studies, and American Studies. For the 2008-09 academic year, she works at Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, processing archival collections as part of the Mellon-funded Graduate Student Internship Program.

2008 Cohort

Julia Sonnevend
Julia Sonnevend is a Ph.D. student in Communications at Columbia University, a Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University. She received her Master of Laws degree from Yale Law School, her Juris Doctorate and her Master of Arts degrees in German Studies and Aesthetics from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Sonnevend studies the intersections between communications, art history, visual studies and legal theory. Her research areas include visual culture theories, the theory of (digital) photography, critical communications studies, the canon of communications/media studies, visual representations of justice in art and media, law and performance, art and activism, cultural trauma, access to knowledge, law in the digitally-networked environment, global media policy, post-socialist identities and Eastern-European media. Her website can be found here.

2009 Cohort

Colin Agur
Colin is interested in 20th century intellectual history, the roles of visual and digital media in the mass production and consumption of ideas, and the future of the public sphere. Before coming to Columbia he was executive director of Salon Voltaire, an intellectual salon in Toronto hosting academics, activists, filmmakers, journalists, diplomats, politicians, writers and broadcasters. From 2002 to 2004, he taught international affairs and economics at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), in Monterrey, Mexico. He holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Alberta and a M.A. in international political economy from the University of Warwick.

Lynn Berger
Lynn Berger is interested in the history of ‘authenticity’ as a cultural value in modern Western society. Her research focuses on the way this omnipresent -- yet ill-defined -- notion figures in discourses around new media, amateur journalism, civic participation, and (digital) photography. Lynn received a B.A. from University College Maastricht in 2005, and in 2008, a M.A. in American studies from Columbia University, where she studied on a Fulbright fellowship. She has worked in print and television journalism as well as in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art. Visual culture in general and photography, more specifically, are her preferred topics of research and writing. As a writer, she likes to dwell in the narrow place where art, the academy and journalism intersect.

Katherine Fink
Kate Fink came to Columbia University after working for more than a decade in radio news. Most of that time was spent anchoring and reporting for NPR affiliate WDUQ in Pittsburgh. She is interested in how newsrooms operate, how decisions are made, and how those decisions shape public opinion. Other interests include organizational behavior, strategic planning, new media and sustainability. Kate holds an M.B.A. from Duquesne University and a B.A. in Slavic languages and literatures from the University of Virginia.

Philip A. Stephenson
Philip A. Stephenson began working in media and communications in 2002 as an editorial assistant at Harvard University's Transition Magazine and the Carnegie Mellon University Press. In 2003, he became a contributor at the Pittsburgh City Paper before moving on to a staff writer position at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he wrote for the local news, arts and entertainment, and opinion sections for a number of years. He subsequently worked in non-profit press relations. His research interests are manifold, but are centered around the identification and potential application of media-specific cohort formation trends in adolescent and adult populations and the extent to which traditional group identifiers, like race, gender and class, may be supplanted by such self-selected groupings based on media consumption habits. He is particularly interested in potential pedagogical applications which could directly leverage this phenomenon into more effective teaching models, greater social mobility for disenfranshised populations, and new media applications. He is also a freelance drama critic and member of the American Theatre Critics' Association.

Alumni

Reuben Abraham
Reuben is with Cornell University’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson School of Management and a visiting faculty member at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad. He is working with Cornell and the ISB to set up a Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and a Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab in India. He also founded and runs the International Private Enterprise Group (IPEG), a New York-based network of professionals, which promotes the role of the private sector, capital markets and technology in catalyzing economic development in emerging markets.

Before coming to Cornell, he earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University. For his doctoral research, he looked at the relationship between telecommunications and economic development in developing countries. Specifically, he examined whether telecommunications services, by virtue of their role as carriers of information, reduced the information asymmetries inherent in unorganized markets (read the abstract of his dissertation). During his time at Columbia, he was an Associate Fellow in Global Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, and also a Fellow at the Public Policy Consortium. He was a Sloan Foundation/CITI Telecommunications Fellow in 2000.

Earlier, he was a co-founder of the RISC (Rural Infrastructure and Services Commons) project. RISC/Deeshaa aimed to correct rural market inefficiencies by providing a shared infrastructure platform for user services in a commercially sustainable way by aggregating rural demand and coordinating infrastructure services. During the past six years, he has worked at three Columbia University research centers, including the Earth Institute, the Columbia Institute of Tele-Information (CITI), a telecom research center at the Business School, and the Interactive Design Lab. In addition, he did a consulting stint at the World Bank, where he evaluated the economic impact of telecom on countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Mercosur region, India, and China.

Reuben completed his M.A. and M.Phil from Columbia University. Before coming to Columbia, he finished a B.A. at Bombay University and a master’s degree in journalism at the Asian College of Journalism. He was co-founder of Just Another Magazine (J.A.M) and was later involved in another start-up in the telecommunications/content space. During his time in India, he was also a freelance writer, contributing to several leading newspapers.

If you have the time, feel free to head over to his personal blog, Zoo Station, or to the Indian Economy Blog, where he is a co-author. You can also e-mail him — nebuer@gmail.com

Christopher Anderson
Christopher Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island-CUNY. In 2009-2010 he will also be a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Internet and Society Program. Anderson’s research interests lie at the intersection of journalistic practices, new media technologies, and social and communications theory, broadly understood. His doctoral dissertation, Breaking Journalism Down: Work, Authority, and Networking Local News, 1997-2009 (2009), examined shifting forms of newswork and cross institutional journalistic collaboration in Philadelphia, Pa. His future research projects include studies of the relationship between changes in journalism and regulatory policy, analyses of new forms of journalism education, and the collaborations and confrontations between new media “geeks” and traditional journalists. At the College of Staten Island he teaches classes in both journalistic theory and practice, online news production, as well as media and communication class more generally.

Kristen Martin Daly
Kristen has decided to refer to herself as an “independent scholar” as she felt “not applicable” would be an unsatisfactory response for “profession” when coming through customs in international airports. Her dissertation, “Cinema 3.0: How Computer and Digital Technology is Changing Cinema” focuses on how the experience, production, distribution, exhibition, aesthetics, style, narrative and uses of cinema has changed in the contemporary environment of ubiquitous, digital media. Kristen has worked in independent film production, documentaries, human rights video advocacy and film festivals. Her short “I Heart NY State” is a finalist in the “I Love NY” short-film competition. Her interests are in art, media and international development. In a previous incarnation, she was an option specialist on the American Stock Exchange and has a Masters in mathematics from Stanford University. She is a runner, outdoor enthusiast and failed dog trainer to her two non-calm-submissive rescue dogs.

Gali Einav
In her current position as Director of Digital Technology Research at NBC Universal Gali overlooks consumer and market research on new digital and interactive technologies such as DVR, VOD, Mobile and Broadband Internet Previously, Gali worked at the Interactive Design Lab at Columbia University researching the role and content of interactive technologies. Her dissertation research looked at content and social implications of interactive television in the US and in the UK. It took both an historical and comparative look at the development of iTV and assessed possible community building via interactive content. Her paper "The Content Landscape of Internet Television" was published in "Television Over the Internet: Network Infrastructure and Content Implications". Gali has worked as a senior producer for the second TV channel in Israel and as a teacher of media studies at the New School of Communications in Tel-Aviv. She has a M.A. in Communications and Journalism from Hebrew University, Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University.

Laura Forlano
Laura Forlano is a Kauffman Fellow in Law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Her dissertation, "When Code Meets Place: Collaboration and Innovation at WiFi Hotspots," examined the local innovation practices of community wireless organizations and co-working groups. Forlano is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Design and Management department at Parsons and the Graduate Programs in International Affairs and Media Studies at The New School. She serves as a board member of NYCwireless and the New York City Computer Human Interaction Association. Forlano received a Master's in International Affairs from Columbia University, a Diploma in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor's in Asian Studies from Skidmore College.

Sangoak Lee
Sangoak Lee's research interests center on the globalization of the media and telecommunications industries, with geographic emphasis on Asia. Before joining the doctoral program, he was an international marketing manager at the Korea International Broadcasting Foundation, a Korean television service for global viewers. He also worked as strategic planner at Samsung Entertainment Group after receiving a master's degree in Telecommunication in 1995 from Michigan State University. He published three articles on media economics and policy while he was working in the industry. The most recent one was "Satellite Television Broadcasting in Asia-Pacific Markets," published on the Spring 2000 newsletter of The Asia Pacific Satellite Communications Council.

Jeff Pooley
Jeff Pooley (Harvard College B.A., social studies; Columbia University M.A., Ph.D., communications) is Assistant Professor of Media and Communication at Muhlenberg College. His research centers on the history of communication studies, as the field's emergence has intersected with the twentieth century rise of the other social sciences. He also writes about celebrity, the consumer culture and media policy.

Pooley’s dissertation (“An Accident of Memory: Edward Shils, Paul Lazarsfeld and the History of American Mass Communication Research,” May 2006 “with distinction”) traces the rise of a standard disciplinary memory for communication studies, a storyline that helped to legitimate the infant social scientific field in the 1950s and 1960s. Pooley’s ongoing work in the history of communication studies includes a study of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld’s Personal Influence (“Fifteen Pages That Shook the Field”, Annals 2006), a treatment of Edward Shils’ wartime revision of his social thought (under review, American Sociologist), a survey and assessment of the recent wave of revisionist history of communication research (forthcoming chapter in J. Pooley & D. Park (eds.), Media Research and Its Histories: New Perspectives on the Contested Memory of the Field (Peter Lang)), a treatment of the 1990s Marshall McLuhan revival (to be submitted), and a study of James W. Carey’s thought.

Pooley recently created an online, searchable bibliography of published work on the history of communication studies.

Petra Sonderegger
Petra Sonderegger's research focuses on changes in innovative collaboration across large distances as people increasingly use telecommunications, such as e-mail, teleconferencing and webmeetings. She is interested in discovering how this affects the geographical distribution of innovation networks. Before coming to Columbia, Petra was a team leader and project manager for the idea factory BrainStore. She previously worked in management training and management development for the Swiss Post and Swisscom. Petra has a graduate degree in business management from the University of Bern, Switzerland.