I earned my Ph.D. in Moving Image Studies at the School of Film, Media & Theater at Georgia State University. My work at GSU has focused on new media and collaborative storytelling, with a particular emphasis on LGBTQ+ self-representations in transmedia narratives. I use a cultural studies approach that leans heavily on audience reception and fan studies in my research, keeping in mind text and industrial constraints.

I earned my Master of Arts degree in Media Arts from the University of Arizona and focused on television and audience participation studies, my thesis was on Grey’s Anatomy and LGBT fans of the show. A portion of my thesis work has recently been published in Transformative Works and Cultures in a special issue on Queer Female Fandom.

My work has been published in reference books, anthologies, and peer reviewed journals. My interests reflect my academic research and includes: fandom and audience reception, television studies, comic arts, game studies, and new media, particularly web-series. I tend to focus on minority (self-) representations and their affect on popular memory, both within the community and larger society.

My partner and I are avid convention goers and have traveled across the country to attend fan conventions and other “geek gatherings.”  I have presented papers at the Comic Arts Conference at Comic-Con International in San Diego; at Wondercon in San Francisco; and Anime Boston. I strongly feel that as academics it is our obligation to make our research not only useful to a more general audience, but to reach out to that audience in the spirit of collaboration.

I’ve also worked in instructional and information technologies in a university setting for the over 3-years and find that it merges both my love of teaching and my love of new technologies. Instructional design blends pedagogical theory with modern systems and resources to produce the best student-centered learning environments. Along with my work in academia, I’ve kept my hand in electronic marketing, new and social media, and video production; merging theory and practical application.