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Education

• Doctor of Philosophy, Communication, Expected 2013, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA
• 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, cybersecurity, sustainable/intentional communities, social media tools for community-building, cyberpsychology, digital ethnography, digital literacy skills, transliteracies, online identity performance, online memorialization, neotribalism, youth subcultures, electronic dance music cultures, autoethnography, phenomenology, proxemics, science fiction, New Age folklores, modern mythologies.

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 credibility of information found online.
  
  
• June 2008-Present - Research Assistant, Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society
  Mentor: danah boyd
  Project: Digital Natives
  Responsibilities: Conducted 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 - June 2008 – Research Assistant, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
  Mentor: Stephen Schultz
  Project: Media Cloud
  Responsibilities: Mass organizing of news stories and blog posts from around the world; tracking the circulation of memes and posing research questions.

• Fall 2006- Ethnographer, Wesleyan University Academic Library Services
  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

• Winter 2011 - Graduate Teaching Instructor, University of California, San Diego.
  ¬ Assisted Professor John McMurria for COSF100: Communication as a Social Force.


• Fall 2010 - Graduate Teaching Instructor, University of California, San Diego
  ¬ Assisted Professor Barry Brown for CoHi100: Communication and the Person / Human Information Processing.


• Summer 2010 - Graduate Teaching Instructor, University of California, San Diego
  ¬ Assisted Professor David Serlin for COCU172: American Television in the 1970s.


• Spring 2010 - Course Reader, University of California, San Diego
  ¬ Assisted Professor Nadine Kozak for COSF178: The Information Age: In Fact and Fiction.


• 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.

Publications

• In preparation. "The Digital Graveyard: Online Social Networking Sites as Vehicles of Remembrance," in Mike Wesch and Neil Whitehead (eds.), Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End/s of Anthropology." University of Colorado Press, 2011 (Forthcoming).


• Winter 2011. “Pro-Self-Harm and the Visibility of Youth-Generated Problematic Content,” with danah boyd and Alex Leavitt. Journal of Information Law & Society.


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


• May 2008. "The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking," Master's thesis, published online at The Virtual Campfire.

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

• March-Dec 2010 – Social Media Intern, The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
  ¬ Consulting for social media outreach campaigns; tabling at conferences and events.
• 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.