Meet Members of the MAPP Team
Henry Jenkins joined USC from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was Peter de Florez Professor in the Humanities. He directed MIT’s Comparative Media Studies graduate degree program from 1993-2009, setting an innovative research agenda during a time of fundamental change in communication, journalism and entertainment. As one of the first media scholars to chart the changing role of the audience in an environment of increasingly pervasive digital content, Jenkins has been at the forefront of understanding the effects of participatory media on society, politics and culture. His research gives key insights to the success of social-networking Web sites, networked computer games, online fan communities and other advocacy organizations, and emerging news media outlets. Jenkins has also played a central role in demonstrating the importance of new media technologies in educational settings. At MIT, he led a consortium of educators and business leaders promoting the educational benefits of computer games, and oversaw a research group working to help teach 21st century literacy skills to high school students through documentary videos. He also has worked closely with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to shape a media literacy program designed to explore the effects of participatory media on young people, and reveal potential new pathways for education through emerging digital media.
Sangita Shresthova is the Research Director of Henry Jenkins’ Media Activism & Participatory Politics (MAPP) project based at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at University of Southern California (http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/). Her work focuses on the intersection between popular culture, performance, new media, politics, and globalization. Sangita holds a Ph.D. from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures and MSc. degrees from MIT and LSE. Her book on Bollywood dance and globalization (Is It All About Hips?) was published by SAGE Publications in 2011. Drawing on her background in Indian dance and new media is also the founder of Bollynatyam’s Global Bollywood Dance Project.
Liana Gamber Thompson is a Postdoctoral Research Associate working on the Media Activism and Participatory Politics (MAPP) Project at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC. She also facilitates the Civic Paths graduate research group at Annenberg. Her fields of interest include popular culture, identity and authenticity, and gender and feminism. She is currently investigating how youth engagement in participatory cultures, online networks, and new media leads to civic engagement more broadly. Specifically, she is looking at how libertarian youth organizations participate in these processes and their various strategies for achieving particular political goals, both electoral and discursive. Liana earned her PhD in Sociology and Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2010. There, her research focused on teenage girls’ social and affective uses of popular music and the transgressive nature of fandom. She has also taught courses on popular music and cultural politics, community and social justice, the sociology of emotions, and new media and technology.
Gabriel Peters-Lazaro is the Media Design Lead in the Division of Media Arts + Practice at USC's School of Cinematic Arts. He researches, designs and produces digital media for innovative learning. In 2009 he helped create The Junior AV Club, an ongoing project that explores mindful media making and sharing as powerful practices of early childhood learning. As an instructor of IML 500 – Digital Media Tools and Tactics, he helps graduate students harness the powers of video and new media as research tools to support their scholarly pursuits in diverse disciplines and departments across USC. He received his B.A. in Film Studies from UC Berkeley, completed his M.F.A in Film Directing and Production at UCLA and is a Ph.D. candidate in Media Arts + Practice. He is also an avid surfer.
Arely Zimmerman earned her PhD from UCLA’s department of political science with specializations in political theory and race and ethnicity. Her research interests center around questions of identity, inequality, and membership within the context of transnational migration and multiculturalism. She is particularly interested in the intersections of race, gender, class, and citizenship in constituting contemporary political identities and forms of participation in the public sphere. This interest is reflected in her ongoing research with Latino/a immigrant communities in the US, which focuses on the relationship between alternative forms of civic and community participation and formal claims to citizenship. As part of this research program, Arely currently is examining the various strategies of empowerment developed by immigrant youth activists, including the function of new media in mobilizing political participation and civic engagement.
Karl Baumann is a digital artist, filmmaker, and scholar. His current work explores immersive, playable, and mobile media to navigate the complex layers of urban spaces. Karl’s methodology is based on addressing complex social issues through immersive media projects that invite user participation and feedback for exploring the future of civic engagement, social networks, participatory pedagogy, and the relationship between public and private space. After completing an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) at UC Santa Cruz, Karl taught media literacy with the Boys and Girls Club and was active in Occupy Oakland. In addition to his locative and playable media projects, Karl has produced multiple award-winning documentaries and experimental videos, within the US and internationally. He is an Annenberg Fellow in the Media Arts Practice (MAP) PhD program at the University of Southern California. In addition to his Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics (MAPP) research, Karl is currently working with the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab (MEML), the World Building Media Lab (WBML), and the Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL).
Samantha Close is a research assistant for the MAPP project. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Yale University and an M.Phil in Digital Design from the Glasgow School of Art. Samantha taught a wide variety of courses in equally varied venues, from English as a second language in Japanese schools, to intensive summer writing courses for gifted students with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, to arts practice workshops for at-risk young people in Glasgow with Impact Arts, to a guest lecture on manga and kawaii culture in an undergraduate comics course. Her research interests are in fan studies, critical theory, theory-practice, new media, and the relationship between Japan and the US. She presented on her work at numerous conferences, including the Modern Language Association, the Anime Expo Anime and Manga Studies Symposium, the International Association for Media and Communication Research, and the Graduate Symposium on Women’s and Gender History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Samantha's research is connected to how the media industries are and are not transformed by the internet, the aesthetic dimension of politics, and amateur media production.
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik is a Doctoral student working on the Media Activism and Participatory Politics (MAPP) project at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC. As part of the MAPP project, she is investigating connections and continuities between youth's involvement in participatory cultures and new media and their civic engagement. The case study she works on focuses more specifically on organizations and groups that build on networks and communities of fandom, online and off-line, with the aim of encouraging and sustaining young people’s involvement in civic life. Neta is currently working on her Doctoral thesis, which revolves around alternative citizenship models and their potential for youth civic engagement. She holds an M.A. in Communication from the University of Haifa, Israel.
Diana Lee’s work focuses on representations of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, age, and other aspects of identity in United States media and popular cultural discourse. She is particularly interested in portrayals of Asians and Asian-Americans in the media, and the implications of these stereotypical and limited representations for the everyday experiences of individuals. She has a strong commitment to inspiring transformative learning and development across the lifespan and is invested in exploring ways we can think critically, educate, influence, and deepen our community's understandings of these complex and interrelated topics. Diana has worked on several mixed-methods research projects in various fields, including work in education, psychology, mental health, immigration, youth culture, and communication. Her most recent employment was in education research and evaluation with Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), where she focused on out-of-school time and family involvement strategies for high school success. Prior to that, she worked in the Research and Evaluation Unit of the National Writing Project (NWP) and in after school programming and development at the Oakland Asian Students Educational Services (OASES) in the California Bay Area. Diana holds a B.A. in Sociology from University of California, Berkeley, an Ed.M. in Learning and Teaching from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a M.A. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University.
Raffi Sarkissian is a Ph.D student USC's Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism with an MA in Critical Studies (USC Schoof of Cinematic Arts). His academic interests include studying representation in pop culture, particularly television and online media. His work focuses on the intersections of Hollywood culture, celebrity activism, and production of LGBT rights rhetoric and minority narratives.
