MENU
School of Communication
Search

Faculty Research

The School of Communication has some incredible people, including its world-renowned faculty. To remind you just how awesome they are, we have launched Faculty Focus Mondays, a short video series that highlights our faculty's research areas and interests.

Get to know your School of Communication faculty now!

Stephanie Dick

Assistant Professor

Stephanie's research and teaching are informed by her background in STS and History of Science, with a focus on computing, mathematics, and artificial intelligence since the Second World War. She is the co-editor of Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society, which is forthcoming with Johns Hopkins University Press. Before joining the faculty at SFU, Stephanie was an Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Junior Fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows.

In the School of Communication, Stephanie teaches a variety of classes, including CMNS 235: News Media, Public, Democracy, and CMNS 353: Topics in Tech and Society.

Outside of academia, Stephanie enjoys being outdoors and hanging out with her cat, Sally. She also practices Ukrainian pysnaky, a way of using bees wax and vinegar-based dyes to colour eggs in geometrical patterns. Learn more about Stephanie here.

Daniel Ahadi

Senior Lecturer

Daniel's research focuses on the development of self and identity within the context of media, migration, globalization, and formation of transnational diasporas. He is currently working on two co-edited volumes: The Handbook of Ethnic Media in Canada with Sherry S. Yu at University of Toronto and Ahmed Al-Rawi at Simon Fraser University; and The Politics of Fieldwork in Migration Research: New Approaches by Canadian Communication and Cultural Studies Scholars with Kirsten E. McAllister at Simon Fraser Universtiy and Ayaka Yoshimizu at The University of British Columbia.

In the School of Communication, Daniel teaches a variety of courses, including CMNS 110: Introduction to Communication Studies; CMNS 448: Ethnic Media; and CMNS 202: Design and Method in Qualitative Communication Research.

When Daniel isn't working, you can find him spending time with his family and friends, reading, or watching British crime dramas.

Cait McKinney

Assistant Professor

Cait specalizes in sexuality studies, media history, feminist media studies, and activist media. McKinney's research examines the politics of information in queer social movements, focusing on how these movements struggle to provide vital access to information using new digital tools, within conditions where that access is often precarious. This work considers how queer and feminist social justice initiatives offers novel approaches to issues of accessibility, data-management, and participation in networked media environments. Their current research focuses on HIV/AIDS and digital media, and queer activist responses to early online content regulation.

In the School, Cait teaches CMNS 210: Media History.

Sun-Ha Hong

Assistant Professor

Sun-Ha's research focuses on how the way we think and talk about technologies shape their human and social implications. He draws from research in and around communication and media studies; critical data / algorithm studies; science and technology studies (STS); history of technology; critical theory.

He is currently working on a SSHRC-funded project entitled Personal Truthmaking. It traces the cultural and historical resonances between two different ways in which the idea of 'truth' and 'facts' are being weaponised today: (1) in the politically polarised, platform-amplified practice of 'fact signalling' that demonises the other side as irrational and antimodern; (2) constantly recycled technological futures that encourage us to dream of fully automated luxury objectivity through the power of algorithms and AI.

In the School of Communication, Sun-Ha teaches CMNS 253: Information Technology; CMNS 353: Topics in Tech and Society.

Victoria Thomas

Assistant Professor

Victoria analyzes popular media to articulate how visual culture represents Blackness and Black identities. Her research is committed to political and civic engagement, diversity, and inclusion in public institutions to transform societal conditions. Her current research examines the communication practices of Black cisgender and transgender women in our contemporary media moment of hypervisibility of Black transgender women and intersectional feminism.

In the School of Communication, Victoria teaches CMNS 210: Media History; CMNS 286: Media and Identity; and CMNS 311: Communication and Social Justice.

Steven Malcic

Lecturer

Steven specializes in internet studies, media theory, and popular culture. His research has examined the historical philosophy of internet design to better understand current challenges related to international digital policy and governance.

In his teaching, Steven focuses on contemporary issues related to foundational shifts in the cultures and politics of digital media. He teaches CMNS 221: Media and Popular Cultures; CMNS 304: Communication in Everyday Life; and CMNS 314: Topics in Media Production and Aesthetics.

Siyuan Yin

Assistant Professor

Siyuan engages in interdisciplinary scholarship spanning the fields of cultural and media studies, feminist studies, social movements, and political economy. Her research centers on social inequalities and resistance in the process of migration and globalization, and specifically, she explores how media, culture, and technologies have become sites for the production and reproduction of hegemonic power and, at the same time, within which agents, institutions, and communities can thrive and resist amid tension and friction. Siyuan received the 2022 Herbert Schiller Award at IAMCR. Her current projects include migrant workers, labor activism, feminist movements, and gendered popular culture.

In the School of Communication, Siyuan teaches CMNS 311: Topics in Communication and Social Justice, and CMNS 840: Political Economy of Communications.

Frederik Lesage

Associate Professor

Fred completed his PhD research at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2009 on the topic of art/science research in the field of high performance computing, examining how artists and scientists collaborate to develop digital platforms. Prior to his appointment at SFU, Fred taught at King’s College London, the LSE, and the University of Cambridge.

His research work consists of critical examinations of the intersections and disjunctions between cultures of production and digital media. The two different yet parallel research agendas advanced through this work are: 1) investigating the imaginaries and the materials of digital culture and how they enhance and constrain social worlds of cultural production; 2) the emerging areas of digital and inventive research methods. As social scientists, our own practices for producing social scientific research are currently undergoing a deep and significant transformation. Undoubtedly digital media play an important role in this transformation.

In the School, he teaches a variety of classes, including CMNS 488: Technologies of Creativity and CMNS 325: Visual Culture.

Milena Droumeva

Associate Professor

Milena specializes in mobile media, sound studies, gender, and sensory ethnography. They have worked extensively in educational research on game-based learning and computational literacy, formerly as a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Research on Digital Learning at York University. Milena has a background in acoustic ecology and works across the fields of urban soundscape research, sonification for public engagement, as well as gender and sound in video games. Current research projects include sound ethnographies of the city (livable soundscapes), mobile curation, critical soundmapping, and sensory ethnography.

In the School of Communication, Milena teaches many courses, including CMNS 258: History of Sound in Media and CMNS 349: The Culture and Politics of Sound.

Stuart Poyntz

Director and Professor

Stuart's work in participatory research has largely involved teenagers in informal learning spaces and art institutes. His research addresses children’s media cultures, theories of public life, social care and urban youth cultures.

Stuart is the Director of the School of Communication, and he teaches as well! He teaches undergraduate courses such as CMNS 327: Media Learning and Social Change and CMNS 221: Media and Popular Cultures. He also teaches graduate courses and supervises both MA and PhD students.

 

Sarah Ganter

Associate Professor

Sarah is an expert in the areas of media governance and media policy in the digital era, content industries, comparative and cross-border research. Her expertise includes analyzing media and digital policy transformations from a theoretical perspective that focuses on the dynamics and interactions shaping institutional fields. Dr. Ganter’ s work is influenced by a cosmopolitan approach to academic work, integrating scholarly work from different cultural, linguistic and geographical academic settings.

In the School of Communication, she teaches CMNS 333: Digital Policies in a Global Context: Current Issues, Concepts and Analysis, CMNS 437: Media Democratization: From Critique to Transformation, and more.

Peter Chow White

Associate Professor

Peter is a professor in the School of Communication and the GeNA Lab at Simon Fraser University. He researches the development, adoption, and impact of communication, blockchain, and big data. He also works with industry partners building next generation communication technologies in health and genomics, social media, blockchain, sports, and big data.

In the School, he teaches CMNS 353: Topics in Technology and Society, and CMNS 446: Communication, Science and Technology.

Jan Marontate

Associate Director and Professor

Jan Marontate is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Before she joined the School of Communication in 2006, she held a Canada Research Chair in Technology and Culture at Acadia University in Nova Scotia (1998-2006). Dr. Marontate’s current research focuses on arts networks, cultural heritage institutions, collective memory, changing forms of creative work, technological innovation and trans-disciplinary collaboration. She has served on the board of arts international research groups.

Search
Search
close