I am an associate professor of in the Communication, Film, and Journalism department at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA. In Fall 2026, I am teaching one section of Introduction to Communication and two sections of Intro to Web Design.
Since 2019, I have been the Faculty Director of the SJU Community Garden, an all organic, all volunteer, student-driven garden with 100% of harvests donated to local food banks and community organizations. Since our raised-bed raising in 2019, we have donated over 3,100 pounds of produce to community organizations, including the Narberth Community Food Bank, the Upper Darby Food Cupboard, the Media Food Bank, and HawkHub, SJU’s food bank for SJU community members.
From 2016 to 2018 I was director of the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative, a donor-funded program created by my colleague Dr. Aimée Knight that partners students in a non-profit communications course with non-profit and community-based organizations to help them with their digital and other communications needs.
I strive to create student-centered learning environments that encourage students to develop their confidence, knowledge, and ability to reflect, while creating theoretically grounded and aesthetically pleasing media projects. I challenge students to step out of their comfort zones by questioning traditional ideas about text, communication, and technologies used to communicate. I often ask students to engage with the community and complete projects with social justice themes. My goal is for students become more curious, conscious, creative, and flexible communicators.
The main focus of my scholarship is to better understand our moment—that is, how, why, and for what result people are consuming, composing, and communicating in public and popular digital and multimedia spaces. My early social media work focused on Twitter, which helped introduce data archiving and analysis to the field and the ethics of those practices. My current work addresses the crisis of hate and misinformation in digital spaces by rethinking the metaphors, ethics, and practices that scholars (including myself) adopt to frame and guide our work.
Service is an essential part of what it means to be an active member of a liberal arts, student-centered university community. I seek out and choose service opportunities that reinforce my core beliefs and the university mission. These include opportunities that are related to social justice and working with students outside the classroom to enhance their SJU experience, including: Faculty Director of the SJU Community Garden; an inaugural member of the Day of Dialogue Planning Committee; and co-founder and chair of the Indigenous Cultures and Communities Working Group.
In addition to my academic work, I am a photographer specializing in film, toy camera, and vintage Polaroid photography.
I was awarded a 2012 – 2013 Emerging Artist Fellowship by Delaware Division of the Arts.
The Lenape, whose name means “Original People,” have inhabited the region for over 10,000 years and are considered to be the “ancient ones” or “grandfathers” by other Algonquin (al-GON-kwin) tribal nations. You can learn about the Lenape by going to the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania website.
On July 14, 1683, William Penn acquired from the Lenape the land where I now live and work, the fourth of eight parcels Penn acquired.
I have also lived in the present and ancestral homes of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation and the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians (present day Schenectady, NY); the Osage Nation, the Shawandasse Tula (Shawanwaki/Shawnee) Nation, the Kaskaskia, Myaamia Tribe, and the Hopewell and Adena Cultures (present day Cincinnati, Ohio); and the Comanche Nation, theLipan Apache Tribe, the Coahuiltecan Nation, the Tonkawa Tribe, and the Jumanos Tribe (present day Austin, TX).
Each of the above links go to the nation and tribe pages at Native Land Digital. I encourage you to explore the site so you can learn more about the people who have and continue to call the land where you live their home.
I was honored to chair the committee that composed and be the primary author of the mandate for Establishing a Living Indigenous Land Acknowledgement for Saint Joseph’s University in collaboration with representatives of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania and the Conestoga-Susquehannock Tribe (SJU has a campus in present day Lancaster, PA). If you have questions about establishing a Land Acknowledgement at your college, university, or workplace, I am more than happy to talk with you about our experiences at SJU. Please contact me.
“In Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation.’ We say humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. They’ve been on earth far longer than we have…