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 third-year student in the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics PhD program. She earned her BA and MA in Design and Society from PUC-Rio, Brazil. In her master’s she developed a critical analysis of feminist subjectification processes through the study of the second-wave feminist practice of Consciousness-Raising, engaging with the tensions between feminism, identity, liberalism, and how said practice has influenced the development of identity politics both in the US and in Brazil. In 2019, Eva held a Visiting Scholar appointment at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University, where she conducted vast archival research that supported this work. Her current interests revolve around memory construction processes and truth-producing discourses within the Brazilian political context, especially in regard to women’s movements and how they relate to the country’s democratic ideals. 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 second-year student in the Rhetoric and Public Culture Doctoral Program. She completed her BA in English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley in 2021. Her research interests center around the rhetorical, political and affective potential of bodies touching and moving together, particularly through the ontologically constitutive and institutionally resistant practices of protest, dance, performance, and music making. She is currently working towards producing a master’s thesis which will cover the relationship between community, identity discourse and musical production in the context of feminist and queer intersectional social justice organizing in Poland. As part of this project, she recently traveled to Poland for an archival and ethnographic research trip graciously funded by the slavic department’s Radulovacki Grant.

Margaret Solice is a graduate student specializing in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics. Her research interests encompass archives, feminist histories, public address, and public speaking. Currently she is working on a project related to rhetorical theory, the history of rhetoric, and human assistive technologies. This project considers how rhetorical practices shape and are shaped by public discourse, technologies, and historical contexts. Her prior research considered the first all-woman State Supreme Court in the history of the United States, which occurred in Texas in 1925. She has a forthcoming article in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, titled “Hospitable Historiography and/of the First All-Woman Special Supreme Court in the State of Texas.” This work is based on her master’s thesis and calls for hospitable historiography as a critical method for coming to know figures of the past with depth. Margaret holds an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Political Science and Human Communication from Trinity University. Prior to pursuing graduate study, she worked as a debate coach at Harvard and volunteered with several political campaigns as a research assistant. Outside of academia, Margaret enjoys cooking, hiking, traveling, and playing with her dog, Rufus.

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 (he/him) is an interdisciplinary researcher affiliated with the Critical Theory and Gender and Sexuality Studies clusters. His research focuses on three areas: environmental humanities in Asia, media representation, and marginalized identities. For his dissertation, he explores how queer migrants of color make sense of, experience, and express joy in urban spaces. 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 outside the United States. 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 first-year PhD student. She holds an honors BA in Health, Culture, and Society from Bryn Mawr College, where she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Her thesis explored the transformative healing power of spoken word poetry in the Black community, highlighting resilient voices across the African diaspora. Currently, her research interests are centered around how various media forms influence and sustain cultural narratives within the Black community. Alloyah aims to contribute insights on representation in media while engaging with contemporary issues. aabobi@u.northwestern.edu

Srishti Chatterjee is a first-year PhD student in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics. Their research looks into the rhetorics of visual data in social justice movements, particularly looking at public perceptions of political discourse (re)produced through images, design, and data visualisation/s. Prior to academia, Srishti has been an awarded community organiser, helping build public movements widely in India and Australia to safeguard the rights of victim-survivors of racial and gendered violence particularly impacted by border violence. Srishti has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology and Communications from the University of Melbourne, and was a policy adviser for Foreign Affairs and LGBTQIA+ Justice for the Australian Senate. They are available to chat about all kinds of graphs, policy, and protests — drop an email or grab a coffee!

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