Education

• Doctor of Philosophy, Communication, Current, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA
  Advisor: Michael Cole

• Master of Arts, Anthropology, May 2008, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
  Thesis: The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking
  Advisor: Elizabeth Traube, Anthropology Department Chair

• Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology, May 2007, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

• Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, May 2007, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

Research Interests

Online social networking, cyberanthropology, virtual ethnography, computer-mediated communication, digital literacy, civic engagement and community participation through social media, community informatics, evolution of media, cyberpsychology, cyberarchaeology, remembrance, neotribalism, proxemics, subcultural theory, electronic dance music cultures, intentional communities, net neutrality, identity performance, phenomenology.

Research Experience

• August 2009-Present - Research Assistant, Howard Rheingold
  Mentor: Howard Rheingold
  Project: 21st Century Literacies
  Responsibilities: Map out tools and literature on the topic of assessing the credibility of information found online.

• June 2008-Present - Research Assistant, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society
  Mentor: danah boyd
  Project: Digital Natives
  Responsibilities: Conduct an extensive review of interdisciplinary literature pertaining to the subject of deliberate self-harm and the internet, including popular discourses, quantitative and qualitative studies, legal and grassroots initiatives.

• February 2009-June 2009 - Research Assistant, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society
  Mentor: Stephen Schultz
  Project: Media Cloud
  Responsibilities: Assist in the back-end development and accuracy of a large-scale open-source system tracking the worldwide flow of news online. Pose research questions and develop potential uses of the tool.

• Fall 2006 - Ethnographer, Wesleyan University
  Mentor: Michael Roy
  Project: Ethnoproject on student study spaces
  Responsibilities: Assemble and conduct interviews with student focus groups; multimodal inquiry into desired future study spaces on campus.

Teaching Experience

• Fall 2007 - Teaching Assistant, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
  ¬ Assisted Professor Gina Ulysse for Anthropology 201: Contemporary Anthropological Theory

• Fall 2006 - Course Assistant, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
  ¬ Assisted Mike Roy for his Continuing Education course on social media, including demonstrations of social networking, blogging, and Second Life.

• Summer 2005 - One-on-One Aide, Special Education, New Hartford BOCES, NY
  ¬ One-on-one assistant to an 18-year old mentally retarded girl enrolled in the BOCES summer school program.

• Spring 2005 - Teaching Assistant, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
  ¬ Assisted Professor Henry Danso for Psychology 105: Foundations of Contemporary Psychology

• 1998-2002 - English Language Tutor, Utica Refugee Center, Utica, NY
  ¬ Tutored local immigrants in English one afternoon a week.

(Un)Publications

• In preparation. "Deliberate Self-Harm and The Media: A Literature Review." With danah boyd, 2009.

• In preparation. "The Digital Graveyard: Online Social Networking Sites as Vehicles of Remembrance." in Mike Wesch and Neil Whitehead (eds.), Human No More. University of Colorado Press (2011).

• In preparation. "Weaving the underground web: Neotribalism and psytrance on Tribe.net," in Graham St. John (ed.), The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance. Routledge (2010).

• May 2008. The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking, MA Thesis in Anthropology

Talks

• December 8, 2009. "The Digital Graveyard: Online Social Networking Sites as Vehicles of Remembrance," at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
  Panel Title: Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End/s of Anthropology.
  Panel Organizers: Neil Whitehead and Mike Wesch.

• April 24, 2008. New Media & the Internet Panel, Wesleyan University.
  Speakers: Jenny Ryan and Sam Han.

Web-Related Experience

• Jan 2008-June 2008 - Blogger, iggli.com
  ¬ Regular blogger for an online youth community about music and social networking trends.

• June 2006-Dec 2007 - Website Reviewer, EONs.com
  ¬ Reviewing websites for a startup online community geared toward tthe baby boomer generation

• Sep 2005-June 2006 - Webtech, Social Psychology Network
  ¬ Daily site maintenance, data accumulation, and various web-based tasks.

• June 2004-June 2007 - WebTech, Wesleyan University
  ¬ Training and experience working for professors: Website design, HTML, CSS, Photoshop, MS Office, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator.

Miscellaneous Skills and Experiences

• WebTech training at Wesleyan University: Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, Final Cut Pro.

• Proficient with SPSS.

• TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate awarded July 2008 from ITTO (International Teacher Training Organization).

• Conversational in Danish, conversational in Spanish, literate in French, familiarity with Swahili.

Organizations

• Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC)
• American Anthropological Association (AAA)
• Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR)
  
• Moving Anthropology Students Network (MASN)