I’m an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication & Data Visualization in the English Department at Virginia Tech.

Critical Code & Data Studies, Visual Rhetoric, Coding Literacy: I study computer coding and data as technical communication activities. I focus on understanding code and data as a process of communicating, rather than as a static product. My studies examine people, tools, and their context of work shapes and is also shaped by their coding and data during activities like data processing, analysis, and visualization. I have also previously published on the rhetorics that impact calls for a new mass literacy of coding.

Communication Design and Design Justice: I also study and perform communication design and design justice. Through a case-study on activism on Twitter, I developed an analytical framework for communicators and designers to assess how their technology is embedded in broader parts of infrastructure, such as the U.S.-Mexico border. I also am a partner on The Rematriation Project, which is building an Indigenous-led, decolonial method of digital archiving. I have also studied how papermill companies have exploited the *.edu top-level domain to bolster the credibility and trick students into buying plagiarised papers.