Alumni News

Graduate Students

Dr. Jason Magabo Perez (2016), Associate Professor at CSU San Marcos, has been named 2023-24 Poet Laureate for the City of San Diego.

Dr. Tara Pixley (2018) has been appointed to a professorship at Temple University's Klein College of Media and Communication. Dr. Pixley, who secured tenure at LMU, will begin her new role in the upcoming fall semester.

Dr. Akshita Sivakumar (2023) has accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Design at UC Davis. Starting this summer, Dr. Sivakumar will be an Assistant Professor of Design, where she will be starting a Spatial Politics Lab and will be affiliated with the STS department.

Dr. Christina Aushana (2021) has accepted a UC President's postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Barbara. Researching "Staging Anti-Blackness: Role-Playing Racial Scripts and Choreographing State Violence in Police Training," under the mentorship of Geoffrey Raymond, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara and Nikki Jones, Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Drs. Yelena Gluzman, Christina Aushana, and Sarah Klein, (along with Anthropology alumnus Dr. Michael Berman) are recipients of a 2021 "Making and Doing" Award from the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) for their long-running project Feminist Theory Theater (FTT). FTT was the 2016-17 Method-in-Residence at UCSD's Studio for Ethnographic Design and debuted at one of the first CommPlayground events hosted by Fernando Domínguez Rubio. They describe their project as follows: "by incorporating key ideas of feminist theory into the act of reading a text, this project changes the ways academics 'talk about' and 'do' reading that could have important implications for how we engage with the complex world we live in." Their full abstract and downloadable FTT Work Book is available here, and they invite all those interested to experiment with their method and materials in reading groups, seminars, and beyond.

Dr. Ryan Ellis (2011) has been promoted to tenure in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. His dissertation, Networks, Deregulation, and Risk: The Politics of Critical Infrastructure Protection, became the basis of his book, Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things: The Politics of Infrastructure Securitybook , published by MIT Press (2020).

Dr. Yelena Gluzman (2020) has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Alberta.

Dr. Diego Cortes (2017) has accepted a position as Assistant Professor, Division of Communication and the Arts, University of Pittsburgh, Bradford.

Dr. Matthew Dewey (2018) has accepted a position as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Media, Communication Studies Department and Journalism Program, Loyola Marymount University.

Dr. Poyao Huang (2020) has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University.

Dr. Reece Peck (2012) has been promoted to Associate Professor at The College of Staten Island CUNY as well as a visiting professorship with us here in the Department of Communication, UC San Diego. Last year Dr. Peck published the timely book Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class from Cambridge University Press (2019). Learn more about Dr. Peck’s current research and teaching.

Dr. Ned Randolph (2020) has accepted the position of Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication/Environmental Studies Program. He will be teaching Political Communication, Media and the Public Sphere, and Environmental Communication as well as other courses. He will also be joining the Gulf South Anthropocene Working Group which evolved from a multi-discipline workshop convened at Tulane last November entitled Mississippi: An Anthropocene River organized by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Sciences, HKV (Haus der Kulturen der Welt), Tulane Bywater Institute, and the New Orleans Center for Gulf South. This working group brings together scholars, scientists, artists and activists from multiple countries to examine impacts of climate change and hardscape interventions on the Mississippi. Read more about Dr. Randolph’s involvement.

Dr. Monika Sengul-Jones (2020) has accepted a position as Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle.

Undergraduate Students

Abby Sherlock, Communication BA Class of 2019, named to Forbes' 30 Under 30

“There’s a saying in old school tech that ‘There can only be one girl in the room,’ and my ideology is the opposite of that,” said Sherlock, adding that she feels lucky to work at a company like Riot where there are many visible role models for women. “I don’t want to just be the one girl in the room. I want to smash open the door behind me so that many can come in after.” Read the article here.

Alumni Startup Successfully Funds Launch on Indiegogo

A team composed entirely of UCSD undergraduate students from Communication, Cognitive science, and Mathematics, has successfully funded their project using Indiegogo. This sleep technology project called Paq involves a new kind of alarm clock called VibeRise which combined with their app promises the ability to “Wake up effortlessly, naturally, and with more energy than ever before – all on silent. VibeRise can save your mornings, your mood, and even your relationships. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“We launched the campaign during the finals week of the Spring Quarter and were completely backed within the first week. We, as fellow tritons, believe that sharing our story with the UCSD community will showcase the resilience of the students of this great institution. We’re proud to be able to show the accomplishments that UC San Diego students can make.” ~ Chief Technology Officer, Samarth Aggarwal, Class of 2020.

Read more about our alumni’s fascinating project on their website.