We will have several Events outside of the Guest Speaker Talks that will feature current members, alumni, and faculty of the CRDM Program.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2021
Margaret Baker
Margaret recently left her position as creative director for a dental practice in the Triangle, where she developed and executed new creative and marketing initiatives for the office, while creating new content, to pursue her doctorate with NC State. She graduated from Elon University in 2017 with a Masters of Arts in Interactive Media and Magna Cum Laude from Campbell University in December of 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Her passion is leveraging my skills in assisting organizations to broaden their communicative reach, and for connecting people to the world around them. Her research interests include visual rhetoric, virtual and augmented reality technologies, non-profit fundraising, and affect and emotional psychology. Her talk, “Reframing the Remains: An Infrastructural Remediation of North Carolina Plantations” will be featured as part of the CRDM Graduate Student Panel on Wednesday morning from 11:30-12:30.
Gayas Eapen
Gayas Eapen is a PhD student of Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media at North Carolina State University. He is interested in mobile media, infrastructure and ethnography among other things. He is from New Delhi, India. His research attempts to emphasise media infrastructure and identity formations in the Global South as they relate to practices of mobile media use. His talk, “Measuring All Parts: From Colonial Classification To Contemporary Biometrics,” will be featured as part of the CRDM Graduate Student Panel on Wednesday morning from 11:30-12:30.
Alex Sutter
Alex Sutter is a second year PhD student in NCSU’s Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media program. Her work focuses on the intersections of trauma & memory, especially as mediated by digital technologies. Her project (WIP) turns to CITI Program’s online training course for IRB certification to ask – how are histories of racialized violence being disavowed, memorialized, & put back to work toward foundational logics of ethical research? Her talk, “Dear IRB: Refusal & Recovery in CITI Program Training Modules,” will be featured as part of the CRDM Graduate Student Panel on Wednesday morning from 11:30-12:30.
Dr. Abigail Browning
Dr. Abigail Browning (she/her) currently works as a researcher in Raleigh, NC. A driven team builder with over 15 years of teaching and management experience, Browning delivers multidiscipinary expertise to a range of domains across industry, academia, and government sectors. Abigail earned an MFA in Creative Writing from UNC-Greensboro and a PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Studies from NC State University.
Dr. Keon Pettiway
Dr. Keon Pettiway is a former Assistant Professor in the School of Communication, Media, and Theatre Arts at Eastern Michigan University. He focuses his teaching, scholarship, and service on rhetoric and social change, race, postcolonial identity, and design culture. His research primarily explores the following areas: social protest movements, visual rhetoric of photography, Black cultural expression, health and ecological risk, and designing public spaces for civic engagement. Pettiway is passionate about helping students acquire critical and creative skills to be change agents and advocates for social justice and equity in their respective communities. Dr. Pettiway is the co-principal investigator of the Virtual Martin Luther King project (vMLK) along with Dr. Victoria Gallagher (PI).
Dr. Brent Simoneaux
Dr. Brent Simoneaux holds a B.A. in English (2006) and an M.A. in Composition & Rhetoric (2011). His areas of expertise include technical and professional communication, editing and project development, and user-experience methodologies for technical communication. While at NC State, he assisted the director of the First-Year Writing program with day-to-day operations of the university-wide program that serviced more than 40 teachers and 800 students. Other responsibilities included the design, development, implementation, and management of a program assessment pilot and usability research. Brent also has experience with freelance writing, editing and project development for corporate clients such as Bedford-St. Martin Publishing and NC State University. Brent currently works as a writer and editor for the multinational software company, Red Hat. His experience in public speaking, giving feedback to writers, communicating complex ideas in a simple way, and managing long-term projects made him an ideal fit for the job. He also utilizes his research skills in various projects, such as one in particular aiming to allow the company to better understand users’ experience on Redhat.com. The data gleaned from this project will help writers and marketers make better-informed decisions about the website’s content.
Thursday, March 18th, 2021
Katreena Alder
Katreena Alder is a doctoral candidate in the PhD program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at North Carolina State University with research interests in Black Film and Media Studies. During her time at NC State she taught courses in International and Cross-Cultural Communication, Introduction to Film Studies, and Public Speaking. She has been a Teaching Fellow at Augustana College since the 2019-2020 academic year. Her work will be featured on the CRDM Grad Student Work-in-Progress Workshop on Thursday morning from 11:30-12:30.
Aaron Dial
Aaron Joseph Dial is a current third year CRDM PhD student. His work will be featured on the CRDM Grad Student Work-in-Progress Workshop on Thursday morning from 11:30-12:30.
Dr. Nicholas Thiel Taylor
Nick is the Director of the CRDM Ph.D. Program and an Associate Professor of Communication at NCSU. His research interests broadly concern the role of digital gaming and play in our everyday lives, and the new and re-mediated forms of communication, sociality, work and labor that coalesce around digital games. He is particularly interested in the growing professionalization of video game play, through the rise of competitive gaming (aka “e-Sports”) communities and the leagues, clans, and tournaments that constitute the emerging e-Sports industry. Theoretically, this work integrates critical perspectives on gender, ethnicity and embodiment; notions of video game play as ludic networks, informed by posthumanist and cyberfeminist theories of agency, technics, and embodiment; concerns around the political economies of game-based surveillance and labor; and attention to the the material and embodied aspects of digital play. Methodologically, his ethnographic research with gamers and gaming work makes extensive use of audio-visual data. He’ll be featured on the LEGO-side Chat with Dr. Sarah Evans, “Making Space,” on Thursday afternoon from 1:30-2:30.
Dr. Sarah Evans
Dr. Sarah Evans is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and New Media at Molloy College and program director for the game studies minor. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on social justice, play, and gaming communities. She teaches classes on game design, digital production, and civic engagement through new media. She will be co-hosting the LEGO-side Chat with Nick Taylor, “Making Space,” on Thursday afternoon from 1:30-2:30.