I am a PhD Candidate in Media and Communication at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as a Knight Fellow and Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP). My research sits at the nexus of political communication and sports communication and utilizes a mixed-methods approach to interrogating complex questions at the intersection of digital media, sports, and political movements.
I am on the 2026-2027 academic job market interested in tenure-track assistant professorships and post-doctoral opportunities in communication and media studies, political communication, and sports communication!
My ongoing dissertation project investigates how sporting cultures, spaces, and media act as sites of political identity expression, meaning making, and movement building through an ethnographic study of NASCAR and American politics. This project incorporates ethnographic participant observation, interviews, and mixed-method analysis of political and NASCAR-related podcasts, media, and social media content. My fieldwork has taken me to more than 20 NASCAR races across the United States, ranging from Talladega, Alabama to Joliet, Illinois, where I have conducted more than 100 field interviews with fans and individuals affiliated with the sport.
Beyond my dissertation, my research seeks to understand how digtal technology and media can be made more compatible with democractic life - particularly in the context of social media content moderation efforts and artificial intelligence technologies. This work has been published in leading academic venues such as Information, Communication & Society, Policy & Internet, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication.
Hussman School of Journalism and Media
PhD in Media & Communication
Expected Graduation: May 2027
School of Media and Public Affairs
MA in Media & Strategic Communication
2022
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
BA in Communication & Political Science
2020