André Mintz

Assistant Professor of the Department of Social Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Keynote Presentation: 

Media arts as critical media-making: experiments, imaginaries, friction

Disobedient Technologies

When does failure become dissent?

Bio:

Dr. André Mintz (he/his) is an academic and artist in the fields of communication and arts. He holds a PhD in Social Communication from Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and an MA in Media Arts Cultures from Aalborg University (Denmark). He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Communication at Federal University of Minas Gerais. He focuses on creative processes and critical studies in digital media. His latest research project investigates technopolitics and technopoetics through computational vision.

Abby (Bee) Rinaldi

PhD Candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

Speculative expressive computing with apothec.ia, a queer posthuman programming language

Workshop: Codeable Landscapes and Traversable Scripting

Bio:

Abby (Bee) Rinaldi is an independent developer and NCSU graduate student living in Raleigh, NC. They study programming language rhetoric and expressive computing through esoteric code and immersive digital art. 

Their main interests are:

Computer systems as mediums for artistic expression 

Programming language design 

Digital poetics

Materiality of composition 

Queering electronic literature

Rinaldi’s goal is to engage in programming as composition through open-source resources for code experimentation meant to reclaim coding as a collaborative practice, akin to the early time-sharing systems at Dartmouth. They post their code experiments to GitHub for users to download and experiment with. They also work to develop and share curriculum on teaching creative coding for novice and experienced learners alike.

Ashley Beatty

PhD Candidate in the College of Design

North Carolina State University 

Projects:

Workshop Fidget Lab: Exploring Neurodiversity through Sensory Objects and Practices

Bio:

Ashley Beatty is a PhD candidate in the College of Design at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications of interoception interventions and technologies intended for autism care. She has a professional background in the design and fabrication of specialty wearables. Through a blended neuroethics and disability studies lens, Ashley uses qualitative methods to understand prospective end-users’ perspectives and values.

Austin Haigler

PhD Student in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects: 

Psychedelics as Media of Intra/Intro-spection: Realizing Pluriversal Ontologies through Autoethnographies of ‘Lived Experience’

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Decolonize Media Studies (A Manifesto)

Bio:

Austin Haigler (he/him) is a PhD student in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program at NC State. He earned his MA in Liberal Studies and BA in Political Science from NC State. His research focuses on how discursive formations produce authoritative subjects on mind-altering substances; how dominant scholarly discourses have historically negotiated the epistemic relationship between subjectivity and objectivity; and how, and where, and towards what ends, knowledge is produced, and who it is produced for? Outside of academia, he is an avid outdoor enthusiast–especially of the coastal plain region of the eastern Carolinas, and a lifelong fan of Wolfpack Athletics.

Bruno Leal

Full Professor in the Department of Social Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Disobedient Technologies

When does failure become dissent?

Bio:

Full professor of the Department of Communication/Fafich/UFMG and permanent researcher of PPGCOM/UFMG, in the line of research "Media Textualities". Coordinates the Center for Communicational Plot Studies: Narrative and Experience. His work includes research on narrative, journalism, historicities, televisions, genders and sexualities. He holds a degree in Social Communication, a master’s and a doctorate degree in Literary Studies from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and a postdoctoral degree in Communication Sciences from Unisinos. Integrates and is one of the coordinators of the Network Historicities of Communicational Processes and Lines: mining network of narrative studies, in addition to other research networks in gender and sexuality. He was president of the Brazilian Association of Homoculture Studies - Abeh (2004/2006), coordinator of the undergraduate course in Communication and the Specialization in Communication/UFMG, and coordinator of PPGCOM/UFMG (biennium 2008-2010 and biennium 2020-2022). He was a member of C.A Comunicação/CNPq, between 2022 and 2025; he currently coordinates the PPGCOM/UFMG Editorial Label. In 2025, he participated in the Resident Researcher program of the Institute for Transdisciplinary Advanced Studies (IEAT) of UFMG.

Brody McCurdy

PhD Student in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University 

Projects:

The Notorious Case of Elmer McCurdy: Death, spectacle, and the social (after)life of a corpse

Bio:

Brody McCurdy (he/him)—a distant relative of Elmer McCurdy—is a third-year PhD student studying sociolinguistics in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program at North Carolina State University. McCurdy has published about language change in the American South, and his research interests span the disciplines of oral history, gender studies, linguistic anthropology, and interdisciplinary approaches to language, identity, and technology.

Bryce Stout

PhD Candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

GlitchCube

Bio:

Bryce Stout is a PhD candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at North Carolina State University. Their work focuses broadly on governance and power dynamics pertaining to competitive video game communities. Their past work has focused on North American collegiate esports clubs and programs, the North Carolina Super Smash Bros. community, and gender in gaming. Their dissertation is about the establishment of an esports arena at North Carolina State University and the people and processes involved on macro, micro, and meso scales.

Bess Williamson

Associate Professor of Design Studies

North Carolina State University

Projects:

Workshop: Fidget Lab: Exploring Neurodiversity through Sensory Objects and Practices

Bio:

Bess Williamson is Associate Professor of Design Studies at NCSU. Her research focuses on the history of disability access and lack of access in modern architecture and industrial design. She is the author of Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design and co-editor, with Elizabeth Guffey, of Making Disability Modern: Design Histories. She is now at work on a history of neurodivergent access and the design of sensory and tactile environments of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.

Carlos Frederico de Brito d’Andréa

Professor of the Graduate Program in Communication

Associate professor in the Department of Social Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Disobedient Technologies

WhatsApp as a welcoming environment for the production and sharing of autobiographical writings by LGBTQIAPN+ people.

Bio:

Carlos d'Andréa is a permanent professor of the Graduate Program in Communication (PPGCOM/UFMG) and associate professor in the Department of Social Communication of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Coordinator of PPGCOM/UFMG (2024/2026). He is a Level 2 researcher at CNPq. Coordinator of the research group R-EST - studies sociotechnical networks, researcher of the INCT in Disputes and Informational Sovereignties. At UFMG, he is part of the faculty of the Cross-Sectional Training in Scientific Dissemination and the specialization courses in Language, Technology and Education (LTE) and Public Communication of Science (Amerek). In 2017/2018, he was a visiting researcher in the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands (CAPES scholarship). Journalist graduated from UFMG, PhD in Applied Linguistics by PosLin/UFMG (Language and Technology line), Master in Information Science from ECI/UFMG and specialist in Strategic Information Management. Topics of interest: Platforms; Social Media; Digital Methods; Datification; Science, Sport and Controversies; Contemporary Journalism. Previous positions: editor of the journal Dispositiva (2022/2024), sub-coordinator of PPGCOM/UFMG (2020/2022), and coordinator GT "Digital Materials and Communicational Practices" of Compós (2024-2025), deputy coordinator of the GT Communication and Cyberculture of Compós (2016-2017/2022-2023), and professor of DCM/UFV (2008-2012). 

Crystal Cavalier-Keck

Co-Director

7 Directions of Service

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Pathways and Lifeways: An Occaneechi-Saponi map of the Great Trading Path

Bio:

Crystal Cavalier-Keck is the co-founder of Seven Directions of Service with her husband. She is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in Burlington, NC. She is the Chair of the Environmental Justice Committee for the NAACP, a board member of the Haw River Assembly and a member of the 2020 Fall Cohort of the Sierra Club’s Gender Equity and Environment Program and Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) Accelerator for Grassroots Women Environmental Leaders.

Crystal is currently working on her Doctorate at the University of Dayton and her dissertation on Social Justice of Missing Murdered Indigenous Women and Gas/Oil Pipelines in frontline communities. Crystal is also an expert in her field of Strategic Intelligence, Political Campaigns, and Public Administration. She has conducted training along and around the East Coast on Coordinated Tribal/Community Response for emergency management, through natural, cyber, or man-made disasters.

Clara Meekins 

Vice-President of the Fourth Ward Historic Neighborhood Association

Projects:

An archive of our own: Communal research practices as historical in(ter)vention through the Fourth Ward Oral History Project

Bio:

In her role as vice-president for the neighborhood association, Clara has been a diligent treasurer for the community in countless ways, including as a steward of the fundraising efforts for association initiatives, but also as a key source of historic images depicting the neighborhood before its destruction. She has generously contributed several of these photographs to the State Archives, and she continues to help source and identify images for contribution to the oral history project’s community archive. After leaving school in the eighth grade, she returned to Wake Technical Community College two decades later to receive her GED and went on to receive an associate degree from Rutledge College. She was a dedicated member of our wolfpack community, working at NC State for twenty years before retiring in 2012.

Carlos Magno Mendonça

Professor of the Department of Social Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Disobedient Technologies

X

Bio:

Full Professor of the Department of Social Communication of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, permanent professor in the Graduate Program in Communication of UFMG. PhD in Communication and Semiotics from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (2007). Postdoctoral fellow held at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain (2011/2012). Develops research focusing on the relationship between communication and studies of gender, performance, body, male homosexuality, and propaganda, with funding from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Research Support Foundation of Minas Gerais (Fapemig). He is one of the research leaders of the Center for Studies in Performing Aesthetics and Communicational Experience - NEEPEC. Special Advisor to the Dean of UFMG - Management 2022/2026.

Dayane do Carmo Barretos

Assistant Professor of the Department of Social Communication

Professor in the Graduate Program in Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Disobedient Technologies

From “Vale Tudo” to “Loquinha”. Lesbianities in dispute in Brazilian telenovelas and on X/Twitter.

Bio:

Assistant Professor of the Department of Social Communication and Permanent Professor in Communication of the Graduate Program in Communication of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). PhD in Communication from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), in the line of research Textualidades Media. Author of the thesis What remains to the body: disputes of meaning in textualities about murders of transvestites and transsexuals, indicated as the best thesis of the Graduate Program in Communication of UFMG of 2021 and winner of the COMPOS 2022 Award. He holds a master’s degree in Communication from the Graduate Program in Communication of the Federal University of Ouro Preto in the Line of Research Communicational Practices and Social Time. He completed his degree in Journalism in 2014 at the same university. She is currently sub-coordinator of the Study Group on Lesbianities (GEL/UFMG), where she conducts research on records of cases of violence involving lesbianities. His research interests include reflections on gender and sexuality in media productions and other records with communicative potential.

Desiree Dighton

Assistant Professor of English

East Carolina University

Projects:

Platform Drift & the Ethics of Repair in Social Media Research

Bio:

Desiree Dighton is an Assistant Professor of English (Technical & Professional Communication) at East Carolina University and a graduate of NC State University’s CRDM PhD Program. Her research examines how place-based controversies—especially gentrification—circulate across platforms and material environments, with attention to feminist/critical data studies, community accountability, and the ethics of representing vulnerable publics. Her current book project revises a large-scale social media study into a monograph that treats platform change, methodological breakdown, and “repair” as rhetorical problems rather than purely technical ones.

Fernanda Duarte

Faculty Coordinator—CIRCUIT BREAKERS

Assistant Professor of Communication

North Carolina State University 

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Decolonize Media Studies (A Manifesto)

Disobedient Technologies

X

Bio:

I am a Digital Media researcher and maker interested in sociotechnical issues of emerging technologies and ways to appropriate and subvert their functional uses. I come from a Communication background and my research trajectory draws from interdisciplinary approaches to Media and Cultural Studies, Design, and Arts to investigate the relationships between subjectification, media technologies and society through media arts and activism.

I am primarily interested in understanding ways of becoming, of making, and of knowing through and with media technologies. My research questions adopt a materialistic lens to Communication to investigate critical, creative, and subversive meaning-making practices, forms of knowledge, and subjectification.

I have held previous academic positions in Brazil, at the Department of Communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (2017-2020), at the School of Design, at the State University of Minas Gerais (2016-2017), and at the College of Communication and Arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, from 2007 until 2010. During this time, I also worked with the State Government of Minas Gerais as the Superintendent for Public Policy in Higher Education.

Felipe Viero Kolinski Machado Mendonça

Adjunct Professor of the Department of Social Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Disobedient Technologies

From “Vale Tudo” to “Loquinha”. Lesbianities in dispute in Brazilian telenovelas and on X/Twitter.

Bio:

Adjunct Professor of the Department of Social Communication/Journalism Course of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Permanent Professor of the Graduate Program in Social Communication of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (PPGCOM UFMG) and Permanent Professor of the Graduate Program in Communication of the Federal University of Ouro Preto (PPGCOM UFOP). He holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from the University of the Rio dos Sinos Valley (UNISINOS), with a CAPES scholarship. He held a doctoral internship abroad, with a CAPES/PDSE scholarship, with the Center for Research Network in Anthropology (CRIA/ISCTE-IUL), in Lisbon/Portugal. He holds a Master’s degree in Communication Sciences from UNISINOS, with a CNPq scholarship. During the master’s degree, he carried out academic mobility with the Graduate Program in Social Communication of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). He is a journalist for the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM). During his graduation, he was a Fellow of the Tutorial Education Program (PET). Between the years 2017 and 2019 he held a postdoctoral internship with the Graduate Program in Social Communication of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) (Junior Post-Doctoral Fellowship - PDJ/CNPq). He was deputy coordinator (2020-2022) and coordinator (2022-2024) of the GT Communication, Genders and Sexualities of the National Association of Graduate Programs in Communication (Compós). Between 2017 and 2019 he served as a substitute professor with the Department of Journalism of the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP). Between 2019 and 2024 he served as an adjunct professor with the same department. He is part of the research group Ponto - Mídia, Genders, Sexualities (UFOP). He has professional/trainee experience in radio and television and, as a teacher, teaches theoretical, methodological, and laboratory disciplines in the area of communication and journalism. In his research, he is interested in the following areas/themes: Production of Meanings in Media and Journalism; Genders, Sexualities, Generation and Pop/Communication Culture; Queer Studies and Communication Studies.

Haley M. Kinsler

PhD Student in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

An archive of our own: Communal research practices as historical in(ter)vention through the Fourth Ward Oral History Project

Bio:

Haley M. Kinsler is Historian for the Fourth Ward Historic Neighborhood Association. A founding member of the Fourth Ward Oral History Project, Haley has taken on the Fourth Ward as a home of their own. Though not originally from the neighborhood, their active role in the project as a historian, researcher, documentarian, and community activist has cemented service to South Raleigh as a key focus of their scholarship. Their service has included the development of a public-facing website for the oral history project and serving as lead designer for an exhibit on the Fourth Ward’s history that will be on display at the Memorial Auditorium in downtown Raleigh until 2027. When not working on this aspect of their scholarship, they can often be found in the Circuit Studio on NC State’s campus, tinkering with 3D printers or circuit boards, writing programs in Python, learning a new craft, or working on a video project.

Johnny Blaylock

Founding Member and Activist with the Fourth Ward Historic Neighborhood Association

Projects:

An archive of our own: Communal research practices as historical in(ter)vention through the Fourth Ward Oral History Project

Bio:

Johnny is both a founding member of the neighborhood association and oral history project in addition to being a long-serving activist whose advocacy has been rooted in Southeast Raleigh for several decades. There, he founded The Friends Committee in 1986 as a grassroots response to the devastation of the heroin and HIV/AIDS epidemic in African American communities in Southeast Raleigh and surrounding communities. Under his leadership, the organization’s efforts have grown to address the needs of these underserved communities by targeting areas of education, health, employment, and social injustice. A lifelong Raleigh resident and graduate of John W. Ligon High School, Johnny has brought his expertise in tenant advocacy, affordable housing, and mutual aid into all the work he does with local residents.

Juarez Guimarães Dias 

Professor in the Department of Social Communication

Professor and Permanent Researcher of Postgraduate Program in Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Disobedient Technologies

WhatsApp as a welcoming environment for the production and sharing of autobiographical writings by LGBTQIAPN+ people.

Bio:

Juarez Guimarães Dias is Professor in the Department of Social Communication of UFMG, Professor and Permanent Researcher of the Postgraduate Program in Communication at UFMG, Extensionist, Co-coordinator of the Center for Studies in Performatic Aesthetics and Communicational Experience (Neepec/ UFMG). He is a member of the Latin American Red of investigation of y from los cuerpos and has a partnership with the critical-creative collective Marginalia Making, of NC State University (USA) in the extension project "Every person is invention". He holds a Doctorate in Performing Arts (Unirio), a Master’s Degree in Literature (PUC-Minas) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Advertising and Advertising (Uni-BH). It currently integrates International Cooperation Project UFMG/ NCSU Dissenting technologies: investigations from LGBTQIAPN+ experiences with support from CNPq and participation of research groups Neepec, Tramas Communications, R-Est and GEL (UFMG) and Marginalia Making (NCSU). He also acts as a playwright and director with works recognized by the public and critics. He is the organizer of the book ''Every person is invention - LGBTQIAPN+ Live Anthology Volume 1'' (PPGCOM UFMG Seal), co-organizer of the book ''In first person: affective and performative writings of self'' (PPGCOM UFMG Seal), and author of the books ''Narratives in scene: Aderbal Freire-Filho (Brazil) and João Brites (Portugal)' (Móbile Annablume). His research, published in articles and books, deals with autobiographies, autofiction and self-writing/narratives, gender and sexuality, LGBTQIAPN+, intersectionality, human rights, performance, theatricality, and digital social networks. 

Jason Campos Crazy Bear Keck

Co-Director 7 Directions of Service

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Pathways and Lifeways: An Occaneechi-Saponi map of the Great Trading Path

Bio:

7 Directions of Service (7DS) was founded by frontline activists Crystal Cavalier-Keck and Jason Campos Crazy Bear Keck on Crystal's ancestral Occaneechi-Saponi lands, the rural Piedmont region of North Carolina.

7DS began as a culture class and youth program, and has grown into a regional grassroots mobilization platform, focused on environmental justice, cultural revitalization and Indigenous rights.

Everything changed in 2018, when Crystal and Jason learned that the MVP Southgate fracked gas pipeline was slated to go through Crystal's hometown and tribal grounds. They began dedicating their lives to resisting and supporting the working-class and farming families located along the route. Thanks to our coordinated opposition, MVP Southgate has never moved forward, and 7DS continues to organize against it, along with a slew of new fossil fuel infrastructure proposals.

7DS is also focused on fostering Indigenous leadership and youth empowerment, cultural and land reclamation, and advancing Rights of Nature, which seeks to encode in law the inherent rights of rivers and ecosystems to flourish. Through media campaigns and public programs like our annual “Truthsgiving” event and the Southeastern Indigenous Coalition Environmental Conference, 7DS is a leading force in engaging our region in transformative cultural and community-building experiences that build bridges and spark a paradigm shift.

Joana Ziller

Associate Professor of the Department of Social Communication

Permanent Professor of Communication in the Graduate Program in Social Communication

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Projects:

Disobedient Technologies

X

Bio:

Associate Professor of the Department of Social and Permanent Communication of the Graduate Program in Social Communication of UFMG, created and coordinates the Study Group in Lesbianities (GEL). She is the deputy coordinator of the GT Communication, Genders and Sexualities of Compos. Composes the Coordinating Committee of Cross-Sectional Training in Gender and Sexuality: LGBTQIA+ perspectives of UFMG. Chairs the Permanent Commission on Gender Diversity and Sexuality of UFMG. He chaired the committees responsible for proposing LGBTQIAPN+ policies and coping with harassment for UFMG. He conducts and participates as researchers of investigations in national and international interinstitutional networks. He teaches disciplines in the courses of the area of Social Communication related to gender and sexuality in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Among his research interests, it is possible to highlight the encounters between the themes of gender and sexuality with Social Communication, especially with regard to lesbianities and the media. He is responsible for the Directorate of Informational Governance of UFMG, where he is responsible for the Ombudsman General of UFMG, the Citizen Information Service, and the charge of the LGPD.

Khawar Latif Khan

Assistant Professor of Teaching in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film

Oregon State University.

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

The Decolonial Media Studies Database

Bio:

Khawar Latif Khan is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University. His work focuses on technical and professional communication, online information, and design justice in digital spaces.

Luke C. LeGrand

Graduate Symposium Coordinator — CIRCUIT BREAKERS

PhD Candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

Shock Appeal: Data Streams, Affect, and Bodily Interface

Workshop: Teachable Machines

Bio:

Luke’s (he/they) research examines the intersections of digital media, sexuality, affect, and power, with a particular focus on BDSM/kink practices, computational logics, and embodied technologies. Drawing on media theory, queer theory, and critical making, their work explores how networked systems, coding languages, and automated devices shape intimate experience and reorganize relations of agency and control. They are especially interested in teledildonics, digital kink accessories, and computation as an active participant in pleasure, discipline, and affective exchange. Their work combines theoretical analysis with practice-based research, including the design and development of experimental digital sexual technologies. Luke’s research has been presented at The Popular Culture Association, Carolina Rhetoric Conference, and The Society for Cinema and Media Studies among others.

Michael Fennessey

Campus Promotion Manager — CIRCUIT BREAKERS

PhD Candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

Disrupting Music Streaming Culture: Dialectics of Noise in Audible Circuits of Desire

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Decolonize Media Studies (A Manifesto)

Bio:

Michael Fennessey (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media department at NC State. He earned his MA in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. He is primarily interested in applying sound studies and media studies to understand how media technologies, infrastructures, and institutions shape knowledge production, subject formation, and power relationships. He seeks to elucidate how different media technologies shape auditory perception, musical experience, listening practices, and noise. Outside of academia, he is a musician (guitar, singing, drums) who loves animals and the outdoors. Most recently, he has been researching the material-aesthetic and political effects of noise, failures, and breakdowns in music streaming culture.

Madhusudan Katti

Director of Science, Technology, and Society

Associate Professor of Public Science in Integrative Humanities and Social Sciences 

North Carolina State University

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Pathways and Lifeways: An Occaneechi-Saponi map of the Great Trading Path

Bio:

Madhusudan Katti is Director of Science, Technology, and Society and Associate Professor of Public Science in the Department of Integrative Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. Trained as an ecologist, his work centers Reconciliation Ecology, engaging communities to study how histories of colonization and segregation shape biodiversity. He focuses on ethics, coexistence with non-human beings, and decolonial approaches to research and teaching.

McKinley Keener

Web Manager—CIRCUIT BREAKERS

PhD Candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

When the Moving Image Breaks

Undetermined, Uncanny Glitches

Bio:

McKinley Keener is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric, Communication, and Digital Media at North Carolina State University and a graduate of Guilford College. Keener is an instructor of record for classes like Introduction to Film Studies, Women and Film, and Electronic Media Writing. Her primary research lies at the intersection of phenomenology and moving image media, examining how screens inform daily living. Her current research project examines how glitches appear in the horror genre in online social spaces. She has presented on film and television at conferences such as Northeast MLA, the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association, and Lit/Film Association.

Maurika Smutherman

Assistant Professor in the Department of Mass Communication

North Carolina Central University

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

The Decolonial Media Studies Database

Bio:

Maurika Smutherman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mass Communication at North Carolina Central University. Grounded in Black feminist theory, her work explores digital storytelling, archival practices, and feminized forms of media-making as sites of knowledge production. 

Nii Kotei Nikoi

Assistant Professor in Communication

North Carolina State University

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

The Decolonial Media Studies Database

Bio:

Nii Kotei Nikoi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at NC State. He is interested in cultural production in West Africa.

Rose Ansari

PhD Student in Computation Media, Arts, and Cultures

Duke University

Projects:

Accuracy 0.78: Reflections from an Automated Gaze

Breaking the Vision Machine: Algorithmic Perception, Disembodiment, and the Refusal of Seamless Seeing

Bio:

Rose Ansari (she/her) is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist and creative technologist working across robotics, sound, installation, and immersive systems. She holds a BFA from Alzahra University in Tehran and an MFA in Art & Technology / Sound Practices from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was an affiliated researcher and fellow at the University of Chicago. She is currently a PhD candidate in Computational Media, Arts & Cultures at Duke University. Her research-based practice examines posthuman embodiment, prosthetics, migration, and techno-political infrastructures through experimental laboratory environments and critical making. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

https://www.ransari.com/home

Rhea Kendrick Munn

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Projects:

When the Moving Image Breaks

buffering…_: The Presentation Will Resume After These Interruptions

Bio:

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Rosa Rand 

President of the Fourth Ward Historic Neighborhood Association

Projects:

An archive of our own: Communal research practices as historical in(ter)vention through the Fourth Ward Oral History Project

Bio:

As president for the neighborhood association, Rosa has spearheaded several community education initiatives to raise awareness about the destructive impacts of urban renewal in Raleigh, calling upon City of Raleigh officials to engage in reconciliation efforts with displaced residents. Demands include the placing of wayfinding signage within the neighborhood, installation of historical markers and information as part of the redevelopment plan for Heritage Park, a public housing project that operates under the purview of the Raleigh Housing Authority, and continual development of city programs recognizing the Fourth Ward’s history. A graduate of Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a BA in Sociology and Education, Rosa has brought her education and training back to the Fourth Ward as both a mover and a shaker, a local historian, and a community activist.

Sara Ghasemzade

PhD Student in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Indigenous Decolonial Mapping: A Review of Kindred Projects

Bio:

Sara Ghasemzade is a second-year Ph.D student in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) program at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on Media Studies, Digital Labor & Economy. She is particularly interested in Algorithmic Governance & Inequality on Social Media associated with marginalized groups such as Black and LGBTQ+ communities.

​​Sa’mya Muhammad

Graduate Student in MADTECH

North Carolina State University

Projects:

Workshop: Teachable Machines

Bio:

I am a first-year grad student pursuing MADTech here at NCSU. I graduated from UNCG with a BFA in Animation and a minor in Entrepreneurship. My practice focuses on concept art, 3D art and animation, photography, and graphic design. My interests center on Critical and Speculative Design and Cultural Relativism, using art as a means to communicate complex ideas in ways that can transcend language. I’m specifically interested in visual and interactive forms of storytelling that foster understanding through immersive experiences.

Stephen B. Crofts Wiley

Administrative Coordinator—CIRCUIT BREAKERS

Associate Professor of Communication

North Carolina State University

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Pathways and Lifeways: An Occaneechi-Saponi map of the Great Trading Path

Bio:

Stephen B. Crofts Wiley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University. His research examines coloniality in media history and global subjectivity. As a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidad de Concepción, he began long-term participatory research on youth, mobility, and media in Chile, forming the basis of his book Becoming Global, Becoming Chilean: Subjectivity and Agency in the Global Sociotechnical Field. He co-coordinates The Listening Machine and has published widely in critical media studies.

Tasnim Jannat

PhD Student in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

The Listening Machine: A Decolonial Media Studies Research Initiative:

Indigenous Decolonial Mapping: A Review of Kindred Projects

Bio:

Tasnim Jannat is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) program at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on decolonial media studies, digital technologies, globalization, and communication in the Global South. She is particularly interested in how media and data infrastructures reproduce or challenge colonial power relations. 

T. R. (MK) Merchant-Knudsen

PhD Candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

North Carolina State University

Projects:

When the Moving Image Breaks

Flickering Urban Spaces

Bio:

T. R. Merchant-Knudsen, a Ph.D. candidate at North Carolina State University, has been an instructor in communication and moving images and has held positions as Image Editor for Film International (2017-2023) and Editorial Board Member (2024-2025). Their writings have appeared in various journals, including Animation Studies, Film International, Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, and others. They’ve presented at society conferences like the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Society for Animation Studies, Popular Culture Association, National Communication Association, and others. Their interests include intermedia sensory experiences, formalist analysis, animation, global film histories, visual rhetorics, and ambience in spectacular media environments. Beyond academia, MK is an independent filmmaker specializing in ambience, flickering, animation, and documentary.