Thinking Through New Media :: 2006 Graduate Student Conference

Participant Biographies

Casey Alt

Casey Alt is the Administrative Director of the Information Science + Information Studies program at Duke University. Casey's research focuses primarily on the history of media and information design, especially digital media interfaces and their relationship to cultural production. Casey has written on media as diverse as bioinformatics to comic books, 3D modeling applications to videogames. In addition to his academic research on the subject, Casey has also been actively engaged in the design and development of digital media software intended to extend the possibilities for research collaboration. Towards this end, Casey co-founded the Stanford University hpsCollaboratory in 2001 with Professor Tim Lenoir as an independent group of humanities scholars, designers, teachers, artists, and programmers devoted to designing experimental prototypes for new and innovative approaches to collaborative, digitally mediated, academic research. [return to top]

Anne Balsamo

Anne Balsamo serves as the Director of Academic Programs at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. She is also a Full Professor of Interactive Media and Gender Studies.

In addition to her academic work, Anne has been a technologist and new media designer for more than a decade. In 2002, she co-founded, Onomy Labs, Inc., a Silicon Valley technology design and fabrication company that builds cultural technologies. Previously she was a member of RED: Research on Experimental Documents, a collaborative research group at Xerox PARC who created experimental reading devices and new media genres. She held the rank of Principle Scientist, and served as project manager and new media designer for the development of RED's interactive museum exhibit, XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading.

Prior to joining the research staff at PARC, Balsamo was an associate professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she directed the graduate program in "Information Design and Technology.” Her first book, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Duke UP, 1996) investigated the social and cultural implications of emergent bio-technologies. Her new book project, Designing Culture: A Work of the Technological Imagination, examines the relationship between cultural theory, the design of new media, and the ethics of technology development. Her published work spans a wide range of academic disciplines including media studies, visual cultural studies, science, technology studies, communication, technology assessment studies, humanities, and engineering. [return to top]

Ana Boa-Ventura

I am a Portuguese citizen who studied Biology at the University in Lisbon. I received my Master's in Educational technology in France and Belgium. I came to the US on a Fulbright fellowship. I am a PhD candidate at the Radio-TV-Film Department, in the School of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where I work with Communication and Architecture scholars in the design of features that promote participation and collaboration for virtual professional communities. I also teach workshops in digital storytelling in California, Brazil, Spain and Mexico. [return to top]

Rachael Brady

Professor Rachael Brady is Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science, Research Scientist in Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Director of the Visualization Technology Group at Duke University. Professor Brady is interested in how technology can aid data exploration and analysis. She began her career by designing signal detection algorithms and creating remote instrument control systems for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence projects at UC Berkeley and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1990, Brady began work on interactive volume rendering and image analysis software for use in biological and medical data at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). During her time at NCSA, Brady became interested in the power of virtual reality as an interface for three-dimensional data. She co-authored the Crumbs volume rendering virtual reality software that has been used by biologists, astrophysicists geologists, architects, and dancers. Brady joined the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke in September 2001, where she is the founding director of the Visualization Technology Group. In addition to providing scientific visualization expertise to colleagues at Duke, Brady's current research focuses on integrating EEG and sEMG sensors with virtual reality devices for motor control and sustained attention studies. [return to top]

Elaine Brown

Elaine Brown is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Organizational Communication at North Carolina State University. Her research interests revolve around computer-mediated communication and deal with questions such as: How does technology affect our communication? How do our communication and cultural norms affect the way we use technology? How is society changing in response to new media? [return to top]

Leith Alexander O'Rourke Caldwell

Leith Caldwell studied Computer Science as an undergraduate at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, finishing his Bachelor of Science in 2005. Presently Leith is on exchange from the University of Cantebury pursuing his Honours at the University of Washington, Seattle. His particular areas of interest are Computer Graphics and Computer Vision and is currently doing research with Brian Curless and Steve Seitz. [return to top]

Serena Carpenter

Serena Carpenter is a second-year doctoral student obtained a degree in Media & Information Studies from Michigan State University. Her core research interests are technology's effects on media organizations, consumers, communities and educational institutions and news coverage of the recent Gulf War. Carpenter has taught classes in media production and writing, digital reporting and nonlinear and linear video ediiting. She previously worked as a broadcast reporter for four years. [return to top]

Daniel Chamberlain

Daniel Chamberlain is a doctoral student in the Critical Studies division at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. His research is focused on the cultural impact of film, television, and new media, particularly on how emergent media technologies produce new types of urban spaces and interfaces. He previously earned a Master's degree in Critical studies from USC and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Michigan. [return to top]

Heekyung Choi

Heekyung Choi is a Ph.D. student in Library and Information Science at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She has been teaching in the undergraduate ITS (Information Technology Studies) minor program at UIUC for three years. She is primarily interested in the intersection of human capabilities, organization, and IT. Her research areas include social informatics in workplaces, knowledge management, and IT education. She received her master's degree in organizational psychology at Seoul National University, Korea. Prior to returning to school for her doctoral study, she worked in the human resource management team at Samsung Electronics. [return to top]

Heidi Cooley

Heidi Rae Cooley is a PhD candidate in the School of Cinema-Television, Division of Critical Studies at University of Southern California, and she received an MA in Visual Studies at University of California, Irvine. Her scholarship is multidisciplinary, articulating visual studies, documentary film studies, media theory and philosophy of science and technology. She is the author of two articles, "It's All about the Fit: The Hand, the Mobile Screenic Device, and Tactile Vision" (journal of visual culture) and "'Identify'-ing A New Way of Seeing: Amateurs, Moblogs and Practices in Mobile Imaging" (Spectator). She is currently working on a dissertation entitled "The Body and Its Thumbnails: The Work of the Image in Mobile-Imaging." [return to top]

Patrick Cooper

I am finishing my PhD in 19th Century British Literature this year at UNC-Chapel Hill. My dissertation is on Victorian conceptions of selfishness, and my research centers on George Eliot and Oscar Wilde. I have worked in computer support and instructional technology for years, and I try to find ways to incorporate my technological interests into my pedagogy. [return to top]

Jaimee Creason

Jaimee Creason is currently finishing her first year at UCLA in the Department of Film and Television working towards an M.A. in Critical Studies. Jaimee received her B.A. at UC Santa Cruz in the Department of Film and Digital Media, spending her fourth year abroad at the University of Copenhagen studying Danish film history. Her academic interests are founded in digital media and current industrial practices. With a present fascination with emerging communities on the Internet and the disintegration of the movie-going population in America, most specifically, the ways in which youth culture is redefining communication and interaction through technology. [return to top]

Jeffrey Crouse

Jeff Crouse is a digital artist and programmer currently finishing his masters degree in Information Design and Technology at Georgia Tech. He creates and writes about digital art that is generated from live data sources and has created a toolkit called Switchboard to facilitate this type of art. He is particularly interested in the artistic and expressive potential of emerging web technologies. He has worked for over 6 years in the web industry and is an experienced Java programmer. [return to top]

Cathy Davidson

Cathy N. Davidson is the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University, where she has administrative responsibility for over sixty research programs that operate between and among Duke's eight academic and professional schools.

She has worked with faculty and administrators to create a number of innovative programs in the arts, humanities, and technology, including the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, the Franklin Humanities Institute, ISIS (Information Science + Information Studies), the University Scholars Program, and the ACT (Arts, Culture, Technology) Warehouse in a renovated tobacco warehouse.

She is past President of the American Studies Association and past editor of the journal American Literature. Author or editor of eighteen books, she has recently published the award-winning Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (a collaboration with photographer Bill Bamberger), the first Penguin Classic devoted to a Native American author, American Indian Stories, Legends and Other Writings by Zitkala-Sa (co-edited with Ada Norris), and the Expanded Edition of Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (2004; originally published by OUP in 1986). This new edition includes a monograph-length Introduction analyzing important developments in literary and cultural studies over the last two decades. She is currently at work on a novel. [return to top]

Allison de Fren

I am a doctoral candidate in the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California, who has attempted to bridge both media theory and practice. Before starting my dissertation, I took time off to produce and direct a DV documentary (currently in post-production), tentatively entitled, 'The Mechanical Bride,' which explores the quest to manufacture the perfect woman (in both the robotics and sex industries). I am now at work on my dissertation, which will incorporate footage and out-takes from the documentary, and which uses the research and interviews that I conducted as a springboard for exploring a variety of different aspects of the artificial female, as well as a kind of litmus text by which to gauge the real-world applicability of those critical theorizations of the artificial female within visual and cultural studies. [return to top]

Lina Dib

PhD student in Anthropology at Rice University, my research focuses on how deleting is becoming an almost obsolete act. Following a Masters thesis on blogging at the University of Montreal, my current work explores the research and development of individual recording devices and sensors, and the construction of personal archival technologies. To address the way these technologies mediate narratives and contribute to the spectacularization and muzealization of one's identity, my research, essentially anthropological, digs into science, technology, and communication studies, both in its method and in its theory. My fieldwork concentrates on a new type of site - the laboratory, where Memex inspired technologies, that encourage individuals to create and to become their own self-edited streams of media, are conceived of and subsequently developed. At Rice, I am also president of the Ethnographic Film Society, and participate in a collaborative project on the Ethics and Politics of Nanotechnology, funded by Center for Environmental and Biological Nanotechnology. [return to top]

Montse Feu

My interest in the power of literature to reveal the hidden sides of official discourses led me to study English Philology at University of Barcelona (Spain). Upon graduation, I was encouraged to apply to the Spanish Assistant position at Hood College, Frederick, MD, because of my desire to continue studying Literature and in recognition of my experience in Foreign Language Teaching. While serving at Hood College, I obtained a M.A. in the Humanities with a concentration on "Cultural Encounters in the Americas." The Master's program explored sociological, educational, and literary research in the construction of cultural identities in the context of globalization and migration. The paper I am submitting to Duke University's International Graduate Student Conference, "From Magical Realism to Virtual Realism," stems from my research on the construction of Latin American identity since the 1960's for my Master's Degree Capstone Project. My paper concentrates on Alberto Fuguet's The Movies of My Life to illustrate the influence of new media technologies in the westernization of the postmodern subject. My future plans include pursuing a doctorate of Spanish Literature at University of Texas at Austin. [return to top]

Erin Fitzhenry

Erin Fitzhenry is an M.S./Ph.D student at Oregon State University. She has a B.A. in Computational Physics and has a strong interest in improving science education through the use of technology. Erin recently received an Honorable Mention from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship program in appreciation of the significance of her research in advanced learning technologies for science and mathematics. [return to top]

Emily Ford

I am a student at Indiana University in Library and Information Science where I hope to earn two master's degrees by August, 2007; one in Library Science and the other in Information Science. My academic insterests include information equity and access, online social movements, and feminism. At Indiana University I am the co-founder and President of the IU Student Chapter of the Progressive Librarians Guild. Before attending graduate school I earned a Bachelor's degree from Reed College in German, focusing on contemporary German-Jewish literature. I then worked in the public sector as an Americorps*VISTA Volunteer, a teacher and library technician. [return to top]

Rodger Frey

Rodger Frey is a doctoral student in the Program in Literature at Duke University. His research interests include film theory and media studies. He currently is working on his dissertation on the concept of duration in film and media theory and editing an issue on biopolitics and temporality for the journal *Polygraph*. [return to top]

Tyler Galloway

Tyler Galloway is, if everything goes as planned, a graduate of the Master of Graphic Design program at North Carolina State University. His thesis exploration was on understanding and demonstrating the rhetorical affordances of time-based media for DIY media activists as a way to empower them to make more compelling narratives for their audiences. With three years experience teaching in the graphic design department at Kansas City Art Institute, he will return as an assistant professor in the fall. Tyler's specific areas of interest are in graphic activism, typography and type design, and motion graphics. [return to top]

Abraham Geil

Abe Geil is a doctoral candidate in the Literature Program at Duke University. [return to top]

Jamie Gray

Jamie Gray is a design thinker, form giver, painter and recent graduate of the Master of Graphic Design program at North Carolina State University. The focus of her research is on: how analog collecting behaviors inform the design of interactive tools for searching, gathering, sorting and sharing digital files, in subjective, narrative and serendipitous ways. Before moving to North Carolina, Jamie received her Bachelor of Science in Design from Arizona State University and then worked as a freelance web designer in Seattle. [return to top]

Lance Hayden

Lance Hayden is a doctoral student at the University of Tex as School of Information. His research interests include surveillance, network security, and privacy issues. Prior to beginning work on his PhD, Lance was a security and privacy specialist for Cisco Systems, and spent six years with the Central Intelligence Agency. Lance lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and son. [return to top]

Guo-Juin Hong

Guo-Juin Hong is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture in the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature at Duke University. With a focus on film and other media in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, Hong’s teaching and research interests include film historiography, film theory, postcolonial theory and theories of culture and globalization. Currently working on a book manuscript on 1930s Shanghai cinema and New Taiwanese Cinema since 1982, Hong has also written on film realism and queer documentary movement in Taiwan. [return to top]

Patrick Jagoda

Patrick Jagoda is a second year graduate student who is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Duke University and specializing in post-1945 American fiction, new media, critical theory, and emerging technologies. He is particularly interested in theories of American Empire, representations of contemporary terrorism, and the ethicopolitical dimensions of literature. Recently, he has also sought to apply observations from the emergent, interdisciplinary field of social network theory to the ways in which users interact in persistent 'synthetic worlds.' Far from conventional video games that users 'play,' he sees these worlds as interactive spaces that might serve as both virtual actualizations and experimental laboratories of new economic, cultural, and political forms. Patrick also enjoys immersing himself in new media, playing video games, and writing about himself in the third person. [return to top]

Brian Jennings

Brian Jennings is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Critical Studies in the Film, Television and Digital Media department at the University of California, Los Angeles. He recieved his BA in English at Brigham Young University. His current research interests include culture and community on the internet and online games. [return to top]

Yongwook Jeong

I have been pursuing my academic career in both architecture and new media since I came to UC Berkeley from Korea four years ago. Although I earned a B.S. and M.S. in architecture at Seoul National University, I started my professional career as a programmer. I participated in developing applications and platforms for many engineering and construction companies collaborating with experts from a variety of disciplines. The professional experience has shaped my research interests, especially in multidisciplinary collaborative design. Currently, I am a Ph.D. candidate in architecture at UC Berkeley conducting researches on how new media can affect the design process and collaboration as well as virtual environments which have a potential to get maximum benefits from new media. [return to top]

Greg Johnson

I am currently enrolled at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Library and Information Sciences pursuing my MLS. My field of study is academic archives. Prior to enrolling at SILS, I finished my MA in American History/Early Modern European History at Purdue University. My undergraduate degree is in History from Knox College. [return to top]

Eric Kabisch

Eric Kabisch is a media designer/programmer who is pursuing an MFA in the Arts, Computation & Engineering (ACE) program at the University of California, Irvine. He is also working as a research fellow for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2). Eric's research interests include network and social visualization, dynamic music generation for interactivity, spatial perception and embodiment, game space vs. real space, geospatial visualization and sustainable living. Past work experience includes art direction, music performance and production, application/game development, and motion design/animation. He holds a B.A. in Telecommunications and Music from Indiana University (1996), along with an A.S. in Audio Technology (1994). [return to top]

Matthew Kam

Matthew Kam is a 5th-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley affiliated with the Berkeley Institute of Design. His research interest integrates human-computer interaction with the learning sciences and economic development. For his Ph.D. dissertation, Matthew is working on mobile learning applications to improve English language learning for children from the rural schools and urban slums of India. Matthew has also conducted fieldwork in Uganda. Matthew graduated in 2001 with a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley. He is currently completing a part-time diploma course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. [return to top]

Nora Kenney

Nora L. Kenney, a third-year Ph.D. student in Language & Literacy, Society & Culture at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Education, examines how computer-mediated communication and composition affects urban youth identities, relationships, and literacy practices. Currently, her research focuses on how a technology-based afterschool program contributes to participants' academic confidence and success. She has worked with the Digitial Underground Storytelling for Youth (DUSTY) program in various capacities: conducting participant observation research at various sites; teaching and assisting in the UC Berkeley Education course from which undergraduate tutors are placed at DUSTY; and instructing students, some of whom are featured in this paper. Prior to beginning graduate school, she spent seven years working for various high-technology corporations in marketing and technical publications. [return to top]

ChangHyun Kim

ChangHyun Kim currently is a Masters student in CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) at Stanford University, majoring in computer music. Prior to his work at CCRMA, he graduated from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) in South Korea with a major in Electrical Engineering. This coming autumn, he will begin a new life at an Electrical Engineering PhD student at the University of Southern California's IMSC (Integrated Media Systems Center). His current academic interests include music retrieval systems, music interfaces, and audio signal processing.

In addtion to his academic background, ChangHyun is a pianist and swimmer. He has played piano for almost 23 years. He held his own "Beethoven piano recital" in KAIST and Stanford campus in 1999 winter and 2005 summer each. He is now planning to make an 8-hands piano performance between USC MuCoaCo and Stanford CCRMA through the Internet. Previously, he had worked for one of the biggest wireless lancard and acees-point manufacturing company, IPone, as both a protocol and application programmer and engineer. During this working period, he applied this technical skills to art work, which garnered him the "Web Mobile art award" from Korea Culture and Arts Foundation for his "Dizital Orchestra", a wireless conducting system using WLAN environment in 2002 in South Korea. Currently, he has developed bluetooth-conducting system, which was inspired by the father of computer music, Prof. Max Mathews in CCRMA at Stanford. [return to top]

Seungwook Kim

I'm a PhD Candidate in Architecture at University of California, Berkeley. I received both Bachelor (2000) and Master (2002) degrees in Architecture from Hong-Ik University, Seoul, Korea. My dissertation focuses on the phenomena of virtual environments, in the user-interaction aspect. My research interests also include Design Computing and Collaboration in Architecture. I'm expecting to finish my doctoral degree with Designated Emphasis in New Media, by Spring 2007. [return to top]

Soomin Kim

My name is Soomin Kim who is a Math grad stuedent at Rice. [return to top]

Scott Kushner

Scott Kushner is a PhD candidate in the Department of Romance Studies at Duke University. His dissertation research is a comparative project examining the French and American political blogospheres and their somewhat different relationships with mutually distinct national cultural, social and political structures. In short, he is looking at how individuals' culturally determined social software interfaces with new media communications technologies. Though he is decidedly not a blogger himself, Scott uses top secret guerilla tactics in his work, blending media and critical theory, cultural history and personal interviews with individuals involved in or affected by the practice of political blogging. He is a proud resident of Durham, N.C. [return to top]

Stacy Lavin

Stacy Lavin is a 6th-year doctoral candidate in the English Department at Duke University. She is interested in science and media studies, modernist studies, experimental writing, psychoanalytic theory, and Anglo-American science fiction and popular culture. She is currently writing her dissertation on post-WWII experimental writing and the Information Age. [return to top]

Tim Lenoir

Tim Lenoir is the Kimberly Jenkins Chair for New Technologies and Society at Duke University. He has published several books and articles on the history of biomedical science from the nineteenth century to the present. His more recent work has focused on the introduction of computers into biomedical research from the early 1960s to the present, particularly the development of computer graphics, medical visualization technology, the development of virtual reality and its applications in surgery and other fields. Lenoir has also been engaged in constructing online digital libraries for a number of projects, including an archive on the history of Silicon Valley. Two recent projects include a web documentary project to document the history of bioinformatics funded by the Bern Dibner and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations, and "How They Got Game," a history of interactive simulation and video games. With economists Nathan Rosenberg, Henry Rowen, and Brent Goldfarb he has just completed a collaborative study for Stanford University on Stanford's historical relationship to Silicon Valley entitled, Inventing the Entrepreneurial Region: Stanford and the Co-Evolution of Silicon Valley. In support of these projects, Lenoir has developed software tools for interactive web-based collaboration. In this connection he is currently engaged with colleagues at UC Santa Barbara in developing the NSF-supported Center for Nanotechnology in Society, where he contributes to the effort to document the history, societal, and ethical implications of bionanotechnology. [return to top]

Colin Lingle

Colin Lingle is a Master's Degree candidate at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He received his undergraduate degree in American Studies from Yale University. His professional career in media covered a range of roles, including copywriter, freelance journalist, magazine editor, interactive creative manager, Web producer and television writer. His academic work focusses on political communication, new media, the sociology of othering and campaign speech. [return to top]

Marilyn Lombardi

Dr. Marilyn Lombardi, who came to Duke University in 2005, is Senior Strategist for the Office of Information Technology, Senior Research Scholar in Duke's Information Science + Information Studies Program, and Scholar-in-Residence for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, a national association of institutional leaders, policy makers, faculty, librarians, and students dedicated to advancing learning. Her monthly column for ELI, “Innovations and Implementations,” along with her 2005 article for EDUCAUSE Review article (“Standing on the Plateau”), reflects her special interest in emerging technologies that promise to extend the collaborative nature of campus life into the online realm. Currently, she is involved in the development and academic implementation of an open architecture for supporting persistent, real-time collaboration and resource sharing among large numbers of networked users (“The Croquet Project”). This engagement with Croquet is the natural outgrowth of her earlier work in the private sector, where she co-founded a venture-financed software development company (“ViOS, Inc.”) and served as its chief strategist. ViOS, Inc. developed and launched a pioneering 3D online environment where large numbers of people were able to visualize, discover, and access web resources in the company of others. She is author of The Body and the Song: Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetics and editor of Elizabeth Bishop: The Geography of Gender, and her current research lies at the intersection of scientific, literary, and visual cultures. Dr. Lombardi holds a B.A. (summa cum laude), M.A., and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. [return to top]

Stephenie McLean

Stephenie McLean is director of Education and Outreach at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). She was previously Education, Outreach and Training (EOT) project manager at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and spent four years at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications as Training and Outreach manager. McLean’s experience includes developing curricula dissemination strategies for distributed audiences and pre-college students, and developing and cultivating opportunities for new research communities to use advanced computing technologies. She directs the Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) Network and is a leader in the outreach efforts of several national and international initiatives, including the NSF TeraGrid, the Global Grid Forum, the Coalition to Diversify Computing and Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC). [return to top]

Gerald Miller

I was born in West Monroe, LA where I lived until moving to North Carolina to attend graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill. I received my B.A. in English from the University of Louisiana at Monroe in December of 2001. I then joined the English program at UNC in the Fall of 2002. I received my M.A. from UNC in the Spring of 2004. I am currently finishing up my second year of the Ph.D. program in English at UNC. I just passed my written and oral Ph.D. exams this Spring. In the fall, I will be writing my dissertation prospectus. I am taught seven sections of the two Rhetoric and Composition sections at UNC and one discussion section for a larger Film Analysis lecture class. Next year, I will be teaching two composition courses in the Fall and then Introduction to Fiction in Spring. [return to top]

Robert Mitchell

Robert Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of English, a faculty member at the Institute of Genome Sciences & Policy, and an affiliated faculty member in Women's Studies at Duke University. Professor Mitchell is interested in the role of theories of emotional communication (for example, sympathy and identification), as well as the role of science, in the prose and poetry of the Romantic era. He is also interested in contemporary intersections between information technologies, genetics, and commerce, especially as these have been played out in the legal and literary spheres. He has published articles about the role of sympathy and systems in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, the vision of science in Percy Bysshe Shelley's early poetry, and the role of imagination in anti-slavery poetry, as well as other topics. He is co-author of Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism (Duke UP, 2006), co-editor of two collections of essays--Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body (University of Washington Press, 2002) and Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information (Routledge, 2003)--and editor of a reprint edition of Thomas Beddoes's Hygëia (Thoemmes, 2003). He has recently finished a book that outlines the history of theories of sympathy in the Romantic era, and is currently working on both a book that focuses on Romantic era vitalism, as well as a multimedia project that investigates contemporary issues in genetic commerce. [return to top]

Molly Moran

I am a graduate student at Georgetown University in the interdisciplinary Communication, Culture, and Technology Program. My research interests include hyperfiction and other new media textuality. I design web sites and other electronic media for the U.S. Department of State. [return to top]

Colleen Morgan

I am currently a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley where I study the myriad intersections between archaeology, new media, open source, and geospatial technology. I graduated from the University of Texas in 2004, then spent a year digging in the desert before I continued my academic career. I will spend this summer in Turkey, documenting the intrasite pathways at Catalhoyuk, a Neolithic tell site. After documenting these pathways, I hope to build a geospatial wiki so that the public can participate in a collective construction of the history of that space. [return to top]

Nima Motamedi

Nima Motamedi is a new media artist/designer/researcher interested in creating interactive technologies that support and maintain love, affect, intimacy, sacredness, and spirituality. He has a Bachelors of Design degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design, and is working towards a Masters degree in Interactive Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. [return to top]

James Nadeau

James Nadeau is a video and performance artist. His work has been screened internationally in film festivals and art venues. Most notably at the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge MA; the Anthology Film Archives in New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, WA; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sao Paulo, Brasil; and the Toronto and Montreal International Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals. His article on the convergence of art, technology and the body was published in the catalog for the Digital and Video Arts exhibition in Paris in the fall of 2005. He is a regular contributor to the arts website BigRedandShiny.com. He is currently completing his masters degree in Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [return to top]

Michael Newton

Michael Newton has a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in Celtic Studies from the University of Edinburgh. He has been flitting back and forth between information technology, art and the humanities for many years. He paid for his college degree by writing computer games at FTL Games in the 1980s and created the first multimedia database about the ancient Celts using Apple's HyperCard in 1990. He has written a number of books and articles about aspects of Scottish Gaelic history and tradition. He began working as Humanities Liaison at the Renaissance Computing Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in January 2006. [return to top]

Mark Olson

Mark Olson is Director of New Media and Information Technologies at the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary & International Studies, where among other responsibilities, he designs and implements technologically-inflected collaboration spaces, both physical and virtual. He also provides leadership on cyberinfrastructure development for HASTAC. His research interests are situated at the nexus of (new/old) media studies, cultural studies, performance studies and dis/ability studies. He is also passionate about web standards and accessibility. [return to top]

Kenneth Rogerson

Kenneth S. Rogerson is Research Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Dr. Rogerson has a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of South Carolina, where his research has focused on international relations, international communications and media policy issues. In his dissertation, he examined the evolution of U.S. foreign information policy. He has a Masters of Arts degree in International Relations and a B.A. in Journalism and European Studies from Brigham Young University. During his studies at the University of South Carolina Mr. Rogerson won the Excellence in Teaching Award, and the journal which he edited, Global Governance, was named the Best New Journal in the United States in Business, Social Sciences and the Humanities by the Association of American Publishers. He worked as a Research Assistant at the Walker Institute of International Studies at the University of South Carolina, where he organized conferences and seminars and assisted in the publication of working papers, newsletters and annual reports. [return to top]

Lauren Rosenthal

Lauren Rosenthal was born in Chicago and raised in suburban Philadelphia. She received her BFA in sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis in 2000, and moved to central North Carolina where she has since lived and worked. Currently, Lauren is finishing her MFA in visual art at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Her recent artwork utilizes Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology to create maps of possibility and critique, and has been shown in Albuquerque, NM, West Lafayette, IN, and across North Carolina's Triangle region. [return to top]

Britt Rusert

Britt Rusert is a Ph.D. Candidate in English and Women's Studies at Duke University. Her research focuses on the intersections between medicine, technology and gender in nineteenth and twentieth century African American literature and visual culture. She is also interested in feminist/queer theories, early film, ecology, and new media. Britt is an editorial assistant for the American Literature journal, assists a faculty group on medicine and culture, and recently helped organize the 'Public Genomics and Bioart' symposium at Duke. [return to top]

Scott Ruston

Scott Ruston is a Ph.D. candidate in the Critical Studies division of the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. His dissertation addresses the narrative potential of mobile media through a combination of theoretical inquiry, critical analysis and practical experimentation. He has also worked with USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy introducing multimedia authorship into the undergraduate and medical school curriculum. [return to top]

Jack Sam

Jack Sam is a design researcher interested in unconventional driver interfaces with a specific focus on racecars. He has a BSc from Simon Fraser University's School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) and is currently pursuing his Master's of Arts at SIAT. Parallel to his academic career, Jack participates in amateur motorsports. He is flexible in philosophy and open to experiencing the world at racecar speeds. [return to top]

Donald Snyder

Donald Snyder is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Maryland. His dissertation examines issues of consumption, community, and new media technologies in connection with the Massively Multiplayer Online Game The Sims Online. He is currently an adjunct at the University of Maryland Baltimore County where he teaches courses on New Media Technologies and American Popular Culture. [return to top]

Frederic Stutzman

Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science, and co-founder of ClaimID.com. His research interests include social software and networks, identity production in digital worlds and cultural effects of social computing. [return to top]

Deborah Swain

Deborah E. Swain, PhD., has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in information science and communication. She has also presented papers and workshops at conferences for the ASIST, STC, and IEEE on use cases, database design, computer interfaces, process auditing, business communications, and software engineering. Her current area of research involves the definition of collaboration models for knowledge management in businesses and educational organizations.

Dr. Swain has over 20 years experience in process engineering, organizational design, business and technical training, and managing information projects for corporations such as IBM, AT&T, and Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs. In 1999, she completed her doctorate in Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also has an MA from UNC-CH in English and a BA from Duke University, plus Technical Writing Certification from NC State University. Her latest corporate positions were as a systems engineer writing requirements and specifications for wireless telephone and PDA applications. As an instructor, she has taught at NC Central University, UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State, Campbell University, and Wake Tech Community College. She is a lifelong resident of Raleigh, NC. [return to top]

Alan Tormey

Alan Tormey is a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University, where his is also a member of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLORK). Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and About Grace describes his music as “absolutely cool and unnerving, and nothing like what I expected.” As a scholar, his work takes a phenomenological approach to compositional technique, with particular focus on Pop music and composers of the late-mid 20th century such as Cage, Feldman, Stockhausen, and Babbitt. As a performer, Alan has appeared with the aforementioned PLORK and such luminaries of the avant-improv scene such as Mark Dresser, Jon Butcher, and Frances-Marie Uitti. He would like to buy the world a Coke. [return to top]

Kevin Wang

Kevin Wang recently graduated from the master's program in digital media at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he also worked as a web designer for several years. Kevin's academic interests revolve around the extent to which emerging new media technologies might change our understanding of power and governance in different political systems and also in a globalized world. A central part of this work deals with testing different methodological approaches to measure the ability of information technologies to advance or undermine political processes, behaviors, and institutions. His researches to date are informed by various theories of democracy, philosophies of technology, information society, and globalization. Kevin received his bachelor's degrees in political science and communications from the University of Washington. He currently manages an internship program in Washington D.C. and will be entering the doctoral program in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, this fall. [return to top]

Brian Wills

Graduate student with 20+ years of professional experience in marketing communications including Director of Marketing for the Rocky Mountain News and most recently, Marketing Specialist for The Indigio Group—a Denver-based Internet platform developer currently operating in the newspaper space. Current research area: the migration of the newspaper business from print to online. [return to top]

Bradford Wilson

Bradford Wilson is a returning undergraduate student of computer science at UC Berkeley. His academic and research interests wander over broad areas of computer science, bioinformatics, anthropology, and medical imaging. Brad's initial foray into academic research, on 3D data acquisition and analysis of cultural heritage objects for virtual museums, will be presented at 3DPVT '06. He is currently studying tele-immersive environments with Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy at CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society). Prior to academic life, Brad was a software engineer for over 1/6th of a century and co-founder of the multimedia group at Creative Media Development in Portland, OR. [return to top]

Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson is a student at Stanford University, where he is both an undergraduate Digital Humanities major and a coterminal Master's student in Human Computer Interaction. He is currently writing a thesis on virtual world design and interactive storytelling using The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker as a case study. Outside of academia, Doug writes news coverage for Gamespot.com. In addition to writing, Doug moonlights as a programmer and is currently working on an experimental real-time strategy game that uses touchscreen/voice input. Doug has also served as the Director of Electronic Music at Bay Area radio station 90.1 FM (KZSU). [return to top]

Sarita Yardi

Sarita Yardi received her Master's degree from UC Berkeley's School of Information in May 2006. She will be beginning a PhD program in Human Centered Computing at Georgia Tech in the Fall of 2006. Her research goals are to combine ethnographic studies of both formal and informal learning environments to understand how people, particularly youth, are using digital media technologies and to then use these findings to inform the development of new theories, practices, and designs of educational technologies. She is currently conducting a media literacy education project through the YWCA TechGYRLS program. She helps to run an after-school computer club for middle school girls, teaching them about empowerment and gender issues through the use of computers and technology. [return to top]

Meltem Yilmaz-Sener

I am Meltem Yilmaz Sener. I had my BS degree in business administration and a minor in sociology at Middle East Technical University in Turkey. I also had an MS degree in sociology and worked as a research assistant in Gender and Women's Studies program at the same university. Currently, I am a second year Phd student in Sociology Department at University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. I am also employed as a teaching assistant in this department. My areas of interest include development, globalization, (especially anti-globalization) social movements and their internet use. I am expecting to have my Phd degree in 2009. [return to top]

Constance M. Yowell

Connie M. Yowell is a Program Officer in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Program on Human and Community Development. In this role, she focuses on grants relating to public education, and on the implications for education of young people's use of digital media. Dr. Yowell is also directing the development of a new MacArthur foundation initiative in Digital Media and Learning. Prior to joining the Foundation, Yowell was an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where her work included the study of reasons why Latino youth drop out of high school. Previously she worked as a Policy Analyst in the Office of Policy and Planning of the U.S. Department of Education. Before that Yowell was a Research Assistant at the University of California at San Francisco and at Stanford University. Yowell earned her bachelor's degree from Yale and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. [return to top]