Ryan Bince is a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University’s Rhetoric and Public Culture program. His dissertation project focuses on the history and practice of crowd control by private institutions, police, and social movement organizers. Bince received the 2017 Top Master’s Thesis in Rhetoric award from the National Communication Association and the Callaghan Graduate Student Achievement Award for his teaching and research as an M.A. student at Syracuse University. In addition to his M.A. (’17), Bince earned his B.A. (’13) in Speech Communication from Ithaca College.

Vidura Jang Bahadur is a photographer and is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication Studies in the program of Rhetoric and Public Culture at Northwestern University, Evanston. Bahadur’s doctoral dissertation, Invisible Citizens, explores the role image-making practices play in shaping how we imagine our individual and collective identities and how these constructions influence our participation and belonging within the diverse communities and spaces we inhabit. Image-making practices refers to a set of visual technologies that inform and are part of both state practices and the encounters that characterize vernacular life. Through an ethnographic study of Indian Chinese families in India and in the Indian diaspora in the United States and Canada, Bahadur interrogates the complex and often competing forces by which individuals imagine broader collectivities and their place within them. This is important, especially in an age of mass dis/relocation and rising ethno-religious nationalisms that often lay an emphasis on visible signs of racial and ideological homogeneity. Over the last two decades Bahadur has lived and worked in India, China, Tibet, and the United States. He is also the co-founder of the DesiChineseProject, a living archive of the Chinese community in India. http://vidurajangbahadur.com/, https://www.desichineseproject.com/

Eva Rubens Célem is a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics program. Her research interests include democracy, social movements, memory, and truth-producing discourses. Eva’s dissertation project investigates Brazilian women’s democratic ideals and their distinct contributions to democratic theory and practice. She holds a graduate certificate in Critical Theory, and before coming to Northwestern she earned a BA and MA in Design and Society from PUC-Rio, Brazil. Her master’s thesis analyzed second-wave feminist subjectification processes and the tensions between feminism, liberalism, and identity politics in both the U.S. and Brazil. In 2019, Eva was a Visiting Scholar at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University, where she conducted archival research that supported this work. evacelem@u.northwestern.edu

Bipin Sebastian is a doctoral candidate with the Program of Rhetoric and Public Culture. His broad research interest is in exploring the histories and futures of how individuals and communities can live together in an egalitarian manner, while holding on to radical differences. His doctoral project is a comparative examination of the conditions, limitations, and possibilities of minoritarian politics within democracies impacted by ethno-religious majoritarianism by focusing on two cases in South Asia: Sikhs in India, and Tamils in Sri Lanka. Bipin holds an MA in Communications and New Media from the National University of Singapore (2019), and an MA in Print Journalism from the University of Hyderabad (2011).

Skylar Clark is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics program. Skylar earned her BA in English and Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley before coming to Northwestern. Her current research examines feminist responses to right-wing populist attacks on “gender ideology,” with a particular focus on how post-communist transformations in Poland have reshaped liberal democratic imaginaries, influenced conceptualizations of feminist solidarity, and prompted the emergent role of collective creativity in counterpublic discourse. Drawing on archival research, modes of cultural analysis, and transnational feminist theory, her work explores the affective and rhetorical strategies through which feminist and queer communities contest reactionary narratives around gender and sexuality.

Margaret Solice is a third year PhD student in the RMP program. She is currently completing coursework and anticipating her qualifying exams. Prior to attending Northwestern, she completed her BA at Trinity, coached debate at Harvard, and earned an MA at the University of Texas at Austin. She has publications in Rhetoric Society Quarterly and Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Her most recent projects have been accepted for presentation at the 2025 National Communication Association Convention in Denver. Maggie has a passion for archival research and her favorite projects engage with questions of performance, identity, media histories, machines, and media historiography.

Elise De Los Santos is a second-year student in the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics Ph.D. program. She has a B.S. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, where she triple-majored in journalism, history, and English literature. She worked in various editing roles at the Chicago Tribune, starting out as a copy editor and rising to executive editor at RedEye before joining the Tribune copy desk, where she edited metro, investigative, politics and breaking news stories. She returned to Medill as a lecturer to teach reporting and newswriting, and now has returned to the classroom as a student in the RMP program. She is studying how language used to describe identities evolves over time, particularly in how news outlets and institutions adopt and use those terms, and the discourse that surrounds those changes.

Behailu Shiferaw Mihirete is a third-year PhD student in the Rhetoric, Media and Publics program. He examines popular and institutional rhetorical practices and their roles in the constitution, performance, and negotiation of national identities and membership. His projects shed light on how socio-political actors use least-suspected rhetorical practices to interpellate their audiences into desired subjectivities. One thread of his research, for example, investigates the political rhetoric of public commemoration, i.e. how hegemonic groups strategically represent the past to gain or maintain social control in the present and future, and how those practices are contested by counterpublics. His interests converge in his pursuit of understanding how identities and national imaginaries are constituted and contested in and through public culture. Behailu holds an MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2019); an MA in Journalism and Communication from Addis Ababa University (2009); and a BA in Foreign Language and Literature from Hawassa University (2006).

Paul Mart Jeyand J. Matangcas is an interdisciplinary researcher affiliated with the Critical Theory and Gender and Sexuality Studies clusters. His research focuses on global Asias as critique/method, digital migrant media, and diasporic nightlife. Paul holds a BA in Mass Communication and a master’s in Development Communication. He is open to answering questions from prospective Ph.D. students, especially those from outside the United States. Email: paulmatangcas@u.northwestern.edu

Genius Amaraizu is a Ph.D. researcher in the HAT lab at Northwestern University. His research interest focuses on technoculture; working between digital humanities’ and digital cultures’ intersection with contemporary democracy and developmental practices, especially as it concerns media, migration and social justice. His research primarily investigates how digital technologies are embraced as solutions within the human migration ecosystem, and captures the intersectional relatedness of marginalization and under-representation with technological developments, as well as scientific chauvinism.

Mario Ulloa is a first year student in the rhetoric, media, and publics program. He earned his BA in Comparative Literature and Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. Mario’s work follows subjective meaning making and narrative creation among people interacting with media institutions. Borrowing from both semiotics and American pragmatism, Mario’s work seeks to explain how public opinion, social distinction, and other mental images of the world can impede processes of democracy and mutual recognition. Mario’s recent article on post colonial film and recognition theory was published in Third Text. Outside of academics, Mario enjoys running, rock climbing, and playing chess.

Alloyah Abobi is a PhD student in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics. Her research interests are rooted in how various forms of media influence and sustain cultural narratives, with a particular focus on how audiences navigate racialized and emotionally taxing media environments. She is especially interested in practices of media engagement and avoidance, examining how these responses can serve as rhetorical acts of care, refusal, and resilience rather than disengagement. More broadly, her work explores questions of representation, affect, and the role of media in shaping cultural and civic life.

Srishti Chatterjee is a second year PhD student in the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics, researching the rhetorics of credibility and expertise amidst information disorders in emerging tech environments. They are an affiliated researcher with the Science in Human Studies cluster, a former Kaplan Public Humanities Fellow, and a Graduate Fellow at the Brady Program for Ethics and Civic Life. Srish is interested in how information systems interact with values, myths, and superstition, and in community-based structures of knowledge and learning. Srish has co-authored book chapters for Routledge’s series on machine translations, writing on their impact on classroom environments and gendered language expression, and has presented their work at CSCW, SLSA, and 4S. Prior to pursuing a PhD, Srish lived in Melbourne as an award-winning community organizer, working with victim-survivors of border violence to help them access support, healthcare, and residence. They have worked with the Australian Parliament and various non-profit civil society groups to pass policy and legislation to safeguard the rights of LGBTQIA+ people in India and Australia.

Ifra Javed is a PhD student in the Rhetoric, Media and Publics doctoral program. She obtained an MSc in Media and Communication from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2019. Before joining Northwestern, she earned a lecturer position in the School of Social Science at the Lahore School of Economics. Ifra’s research interests include queer community and identity building, Indigenous South Asian queer cultures, and digital queer counter-publics within the Pakistani context.

Karl Bullock is a PhD Candidate in the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics doctoral program. His research explores the rhetorical power and constraints of the sports arena as a protest site. Karl is interested in the transformation of the Black American athlete and their civic engagement through a historical and contemporary lens. Specifically, he aims to examine how commercial interests foster regulation and censorship of Black American athletes’ political and social protests. Additionally, Karl is interested in the growing commercialization and privatization of professional sports and its relationship to restrictions on the scope of protest movements and transient attitudes for making structural change in the 21st Century.

Andy Acosta is a Ph.D. student in the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics program, advised by Dr. Moya Bailey. His research interests include mad studies, Hip Hop studies, gender & sexuality studies, and race & ethnic studies influenced by activism. Specifically, he is researching suicide-themed Hip Hop songs and albums, emerging rap styles, and Norteño rap albums. Andy has an M.A. in Communication Studies from California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB); a B.A. in Communication with a minor in Social Advocacy from California Polytech State University, Humboldt (Cal Poly Humboldt); and two A.A.s from Cabrillo College, one in Communication Studies and another in Liberal Arts & Sciences with an emphasis on Interdisciplinary Studies. He has been teaching since 2018 and has taught at various institutions, from Hispanic Servicing Institutions (e.g., CSUSB, Cabrillo, and San Bernardino Valley College) to prestigious R1 institutions, such as Northwestern. Specifically, Andy taught public speaking, interpersonal communication, and shadow internships designed to teach grad students how to teach public speaking. His passion for teaching began at a young age while his research interest developed at Cal Poly Humboldt, and he has presented at numerous international, national, and regional conferences. Andy is part of Dr. Bailey’s research lab, Digital Apothecary. andy.acosta@u.northwestern.edu

Jay Nelson (he/him/his) is a first-year PhD student in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics. He is broadly interested in how law-induced precarity shapes marginalized identity and how these dynamics influence rhetorical and political engagements with hegemonic ideology. His current research investigates how cisgender women’s historical precarity informs the rhetoric of trans-exclusionary feminists, focusing on how such rhetoric both resists and reaffirms patriarchal ideologies traditionally used to block women’s rights legislation. Prior to joining the School of Communication, Jay graduated summa cum laude from CUNY Hunter College with a B.A. in English and a minor in Philosophy. He is an alum of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, where he studied the rhetorical performance of Black masculinity in 1980s gangsta rap. He has presented his work at Harvard University’s Scholarship & Social Justice Undergraduate Research Conference, conducted research as a visiting student researcher at Stanford University, and participated in the Eva Kastan Grove Fellowship at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, where he received mentorship from former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney on women’s policy issues.