Ream Al-Ghamdi
Ream Al-Ghamdi is in the Digital Humanities track. Her research interests are in social media, especially integrity on platforms. She holds a master’s degree from KSA in media and communication and a bachelor’s degree in library and information systems. She is a lecturer in the Media department at King Saud University -KSA. Recent presentations include Fan Studies Network, North America. To learn more, please visit Ream’s blog.
Bshaer Alharazi
Bshaer Alharazi is in the emphasis in Digital Media. She has been selected as one of the UCF Global Student Ambassadors. She is an instructor at Taif University, Saudi Arabia. She holds a MA in Multimedia Journalism, and her BA was in the Mass Communication on the PR track. Her research interests include social media interpretation and memes.
Amanda Altamirano
Amanda Altamirano specializes in Scientific and Technical Communication and has several years of experience as a professional technical communicator. Her research includes publications that discuss intersectional feminism in technical communication, human-centered computing, and user-centered design. Amanda is currently conducting a mixed-methods research project centered on workplace bias in the software industry. To learn more about her experience in the T&T program, check out Amanda’s CAH blog post. You can connect with Amanda via LinkedIn or Twitter @AmandaAlta3.
Nikki Fragala Barnes
Nikki Fragala Barnes is an experimental visual poet and participatory installation artist. Her work is often collaborative, community-based and site-sensitive. An arts activist, Barnes centers material works on accessibility, land-based public histories, and the poetics of place. Also an independent editor and curator, Barnes served as the Poetry Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Obra/Artifact, a literary journal of experimental works. She is a poetry writing instructor with UCF’s English Department. Research areas of interest include geo/eco-poetics, public-facing museum practice and monument studies, multilingual/translated works across media, and the AR experience of digital archives. She can be found at @bynikkibarnes.
PS Berge
PS Berge (they/she) is a game and media researcher studying trans play, toxic technoculutres, and the so-called unplayble. She is an award-winning game designer as well as the Director of the Discord Academic Research Community. Their work has appeared in New Media & Society, Game Studies, Feminist Media Studies, and elsewhere. Website: http://psberge.com/
Traci Billingsley
Traci Billingsley is a Senior Technical Writer with 20+ years in the IT and Tech Comm industries. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Scientific and Technical Communication (with a minor in Computer Science), a Master of Science in IT (with a concentration in App Development), and is excited to round out her studies in the T&T Ph.D. program at UCF (with a concentration in Scientific and Technical Communication). Her doctoral research focuses on diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility in Sci/Tech Comm.
Jacob Boccio
Jacob Boccio received an MA in Film Studies from the University of South Florida Tampa in 2016, and an MLA in Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts from USF Saint Petersburg in 2017. Boccio’s research interrogates how ideology and consumer culture is shaped by film and new media, software, interfaces, and online platforms, and he has presented at national and international organizations such as the Cultural Studies Association, Zizek Studies Conference, Media Ecology Association, and Popular Culture Association.
Matthew Bryan
Matthew Bryan is a senior lecturer in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as the assistant director of the University Writing Center. His research interests include technology use in writing centers and the construction of identities with and through writing software.
Alex Chabot
Alex Chabot completed his undergraduate work at State University of New York at Albany with a major in English. He holds an M.A. in English Education from the University of Central Florida. Alex has been an educator since 2010, teaching English and Education in both Brevard Public Schools and Eastern Florida State College. His current research interests are based in the development and utilization of educational technologies.
Nikki Chasteen
Nikki holds an M.A. degree in Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media from Nova Southeastern University (2020), and a B.A. from NSU in Communication (2017). Nikki is a full-time instructor of first-year writing and professional writing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. Nikki also is the Membership Officer for the Global Society of Literacy Educators (GSOLE), where she is an active member of multiple subcommittees. Nikki’s research focuses on online pedagogy and technical and professional communication at the intersection of feminist methodologies.
Nada Chehab
Nada Chehab researches vaccine hesitancy and vaccine acceptance on social media. Her research interests are in public health ethics, medical ethics, medical humanities, and science and misinformation within the Digital Humanities track. Other research interests are data visualization, social epistemology, social media research, and social change. Nada graduated with a master’s in healthcare administration from the University of Central Florida in 2012. Her BS is in Medical Lab Technology from the American University of Beirut..
Jennifer Crowell
Jennifer Crowell is interested in rhetorical and cultural identity; writing transfer; and, narrative, grounded theory, case study, interview, survey, and mixed methods study designs. She entered the Texts and Technology program in 2018 and holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where she focused on rhetoric, writing within and across disciplines, networked and organizational communication, and discursive leadership. She teaches first-year composition courses at Seminole State College of Florida.
Christopher Foley
Chris earned his M.A. in English from Eastern Kentucky University in 2014. He has had the pleasure of learning as a writing center tutor and coordinator, community college teacher, and instructor in the UCF Department of Writing and Rhetoric. His research interests are related to [writing] pedagogy, rhetoric, and ideology. He has presented research on writing center spaces and cultures at Conference on College Composition and Communication, Southeastern Writing Center Association, and HASTAC. His current research seeks to understand how critical discourse analysis can be used to address harmful ideologies encountered in the first year writing classroom.
Stephanie Garcia
Stephanie Garcia specializes in Digital Humanities. Prior to joining T&T, Stephanie earned a Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing in Cognitive Science and Emerging Media. She is a triple Knight and also received her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology from UCF. Her research interests are gender representation in media and the roles women, especially women of color, play in digital media.Her other research interests focus on cultural representation and trends in the arts, specifically how cultural trends are perpetuated through media and vise versa.
Tami Gitto-Kania
Tami Gitto is a tenured instructor of Humanities with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She earned both her BA and MA From Stony Brook University. Her research explores digitally mediated communication (DMC) and its impact on interpersonal discourse when technology is embedded. She considers users’ experiences, interface and platform choices.
Anyssa Gonzalez
Anyssa is looking to contribute to the field of games in educational spaces. A life-long learner, Anyssa has spent her entire life as either a student or a teacher, having worked in secondary education for the last six years. She earned her M.A. in Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at Nova Southeastern University last year with her thesis on implementing Dungeons & Dragons in the composition classroom. She is looking forward to the new dimensions of knowledge that Texts and Technology will bring to her work.
Mónica G. González Burgos
Mónica (she/her) holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón (2017) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, majoring in Journalism and minoring in Digital Television Production. She also holds a Master of Arts from Syracuse University’s Audio Arts Program (2018). A recipient of UCF’s 2022 Summer Mentoring Fellowship, she will begin her research in audiobook production accessibility for independent authors, hoping to improve production and distribution within the literary industry. She also works as an Entertainment Stage Technician, primarily as an audio engineer. Her research interests include sound production, fiction, and YA literature, as well as pop culture theory, especially in the film, literature, and gaming industries.
Melissa Hanbery
Melissa Hanbery is a part-time student in Texts & Technology, with a concentration in the Digital Humanities track. She works full time as an instructional designer for a health care company and has almost 20 years of experience in education. She holds a B.S. degree in Journalism and an M.Ed. with a concentration in educational administration, both from the University of Florida. Her area of research will focus on the gamification of learning and the use of educational technology for adult learners.
Ha’ani Hogan
Ha’Ani Hogan is the Development and Marketing Manager at the Downtown Arts District, where she is responsible for grants, sponsorships, event planning, and cultivating donors to support the local arts community. Hogan earned an M.A. in Arts Administration from the Savannah College of Art and Design. A strong believer in the importance of creative place-making, she applies this concept to her professional and academic work. Her research includes studying the impacts of public art and how technology can help public art creators educate communities, enhance economic development, and influence social change.
Vee Kennedy
Vee Kennedy (they/them/theirs) is a Visiting Instructor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida and a student in the Texts and Technology PhD Program. Their research interests are at the intersections of queer and trans rhetorics, gender, fandom, neurodivergence and (dis)ability
Daniel J. King
Daniel J. King is studying how to integrate serious and casual game design principles, and he has published his “Activist-Casual Game Design Framework” at the 2021 International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games toward this end. For his dissertation project, he is designing an original video game in order to demonstrate the Activist-Casual Framework. Before coming to UCF, Daniel completed his Master’s Degree in Writing at Nova Southeastern University in 2015. He is a part-time student and a full-time project manager for a digital marketing company.
Kathryn Kong
Kathryn Kong holds an MA in English Translation and a BE in Computer Science Engineering. Her fascination with video games, digital storytelling, and cross-cultural communication drives her to develop her game design skills, creating interactive and captivating narratives on a global scale. As a multilingual translator and game localization expert, her master’s thesis on game localization ignited her curiosity in exploring gender, religious, and cultural issues in game texts and localization, ensuring effective communication networks during game development while avoiding storytelling failures. She also explores how games can enhance immersive language learning and computer-assisted L2 training and translation (CAL2T). She has 3 years of experience in the game industry, contributing to the development of an adventure RPG game called Mato Anomalies.
Emily LaPadura
Emily LaPadura is a PhD candidate specializing in Rhetoric and Writing. She earned her MA in Rhetoric and Composition from Colorado State University in 2015. Currently, Emily’s interest is in how marginalized and underrepresented student groups utilize technology. Through a feminist and critical race foundation, she strives to resist the white, westernized ideas of what defines technology through a more inclusive understanding of technology as existing both inside and outside of online spaces. Her dissertation research entails exploring the experiences of alumni from the Ronald E. McNair Scholars program in their transition from undergraduate to graduate school and how technology has played a role in that process. She currently serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Office of Graduate Studies, co-teaching a proposal writing course designed for students from low-income, first-generation backgrounds to apply to national fellowships, scholarships, and graduate programs
Kate Loesel
Kate Loesel received her bachelor’s degree in Broadcast and Cinematic Arts and her master’s degree in Film Theory and Criticism from Central Michigan University. Her research in Digital Humanities focuses on the two-way communication and relationship between content creators and content consumers. Her research interests include fan studies, queer studies, and parasocial relationships.
Alessandra Zinicola Lopez
MA English Technical Communication, University of Central Florida, 2020
Alessandra earned undergraduate degrees in psychology and marketing business administration and had a corporate career prior to turning her academic focus toward writing and texts during her graduate education. As a Ph.D. candidate within UCF’s Texts and Technology program, Alessandra’s research interests center around historical and modern domestic texts such as cookbooks and recipes as technical documentation. This tech comm research includes intersecting topics of history, culinary arts, digital humanities, gender, marginalia, household labor and care, food studies, domesticity, home economics, and digital curation. Find Alessandra online at https://madeofallwork.com/ and on Twitter @AMadeOfAllWork.
Kirk Lundblade
Kirk Lundblade’s research focuses on historical games and the people that play them. Combining ethnographic scholarship examining digital cultures with media criticism and historiographic analysis, his research extends scholarly analysis of historical games as such into examinations of the role of history and historical concepts in contemporary communities of play. Building upon his experience as a software engineer, technical writer, and semi-professional strategy gamer, his work extends into technical examination of these games and the subject communities’ facility with blended techno-historical discourses as a novel form of public historical consciousness. His work has been published in (among others) Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and SIGDOC. His other scholarly interests include digital cultures more broadly, along with analog war games and the politics of representing and roleplaying fascism on the tabletop.
Shelley Maccini
Shelley Maccini is an Associate Instructor in the Integrated Business program at UCF, serving as the lead instructor for the Data Driven Decision Making course. Prior to joining the faculty at UCF, she held management positions in the tourism industry, with an emphasis on destination marketing. She holds a JD from George Washington University and an MBA from UCF. Bridging her professional experience outside of academia, her work in the classroom, and her educational background, Shelley’s research interest focuses on the ethical use of gamification tools in non-game settings, specifically in a marketing context.
Derek Manns
Derek Manns’s professional development experience and teaching interests include Game Design, Level Design, 3D modeling, and Programming. He founded Sungura Games and went on to produce games and applications which included IGDA app, Call in Sick, and Zamboni Challenge.
Demagio Mansell
Demagio Mansell’s research focuses on evolving interactive storytelling through user emotions and engagement. He hopes to develop immersive environments that will help influence user decisions. His previous work includes digital practices and creative production within digital advertising and web design. He holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from Nova Southern University and Bachelor of Business Administration from Florida Atlantic University in Management and Marketing. He has several years’ experience within the entertainment media from film, radio, to news.
David Matteson
David is the Associate Curator of Education at the Rollins Museum of Art, where he designs engaging learning experiences for Rollins College students and the community at large. He holds a BA in Studio Art and English and an MBA from Rollins. At UCF, his research encompasses the history and future of museums as spaces for informal learning. He is interested in how technology can be used to better engage museum visitors of all ages and abilities—believing that through effective museum practice we build empathy.
Javier Molinares
I am a United States Army Veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division and hold a MS in Global Strategic Communication from the Florida Institute of Technology (2013). I am also the founder and publisher of the bilingual newspaper AL DIA TODAY and the president and founder of the Brevard Hispanic Center. My research interests include doing research to help the blind to become great broadcasters and public speakers and games and devices based on noise and motion.
Keidra Daniels Navaroli
Keidra is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow whose research in Public History focuses on the intersections of museum spaces, digital technologies, and underrepresented communities. Formerly, she worked as the assistant director and curator of the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts at Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech). She earned her M.A. in the History and Criticism of Art from Florida State University (B.A. in Art History from the University of Florida) and completed internships with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Sotheby’s Auction House in New York. Keidra is an alumna of the Museum Leadership Institute’s NextGen Program for Museum Leaders and currently serves on the boards of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) and the Surface Design Association.Learn more about her work and experience at https://www.kdnavaroli.com/.
Noemi Nunez
Noemi Nunez received her M.A. in Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media from Nova Southeastern University and her B.A. in Communication Arts from Florida International University. There, she researched writing center theories with an emphasis on multilingual students, and speech communication projects. Her recent research interests include race and gender studies, feminist theories, transmedia storytelling, and fandom studies. As a first-generation student and Latina, Noemi explores the impact media has on society and culture, specifically first-generation BIPOC.
Michael Powell
Michael received his B.S in Information Technology with a minor in Digital Media from the University of Central Florida. After graduation, he started working for the University of Central Florida. During his time with the university, Michael continued his education completing an M.S. degree in Digital Forensics. His area of focus is on technology and its uses to improve efficiency in modern society. Currently Michael mentors groups of undergraduate Computer Science students. His recent publications include Redesigning the research design: Accelerating the pace of research through technology innovation (SeGAH 2016) and a workshop and presentation at HASTAC 2017.
Marissa Salas
Marissa’s dissertation centers around the perceptions of digitally mediated soundscapes and its impact on conservation measures. Her national and international presentations were on feminism, communications, and publics in TV/film and Twitter. Her past research focused on queer geographies and politics some of which is in Queerying Planning: Challenging Heteronormative Assumptions and Reframing Planning Practice (Dr. P. Doan, ed.) and reported in NGLTF’s Same-sex Couple Households in the United States: A Report from the 2000 Census. Marissa earned her MSP in urban and regional planning from Florida State University, and focused on transportation, GIS, research, and applications. More about Marissa’s experience and research interests can be found on her website.
Carina Seagrave Fuller
Carina Seagrave Fuller holds her M.A. in Mass Communications with a focus in Journalism from the University of Florida. During her time at UF, her research focused on the social media usage of non-profit organizations to recruit volunteers. She was also a copywriter for the Independent Florida Alligator. Carina’s B.S. is in English Literature and Religion from the Florida State University. Carina currently teaches 9th grade ELA in Orange County. Her research interests are based in the consumption and accessibility of classic literature by grade school-aged students in the digital era.
Francine N. Sutton
Francine is a Ph.D. candidate in the T&T program with a concentration in Digital Media. She obtained a BA in Art and MA in Urban & Regional Planning from Jackson State University. Her dissertation research aims to examine older adults’ user experience with mHealth applications through a three-phase mixed methods methodology. Her research interests include user experience design, popular culture, fandom studies, and video game studies. She had the opportunity to present her academic papers at several international, national, and regional popular culture conferences. To date, Francine has presented her preliminary dissertation research findings at SIGDOC ‘20 and SIGDOC ‘22.
Evan Wallace
MA, History, Appalachian State, 2018
With a background in Russian medieval culture focusing in political theology, meta-medievalisms, and rhetorical history Evan is interested in looking at contemporary utilizations of history in modern Russian political rhetoric. With a digital humanities specialization Evan is utilizing data scraping to understand how Western media audiences perceive and contextualize pseudo-historical claims posted by Russian State Media around the War in Ukraine posted online.