Northwestern University

Associate Dean for Graduate Education, School of Communication

Professor, Communications Studies, School of Communication

Professor, Journalism, Medill School of Journalism, Media & Integrated Marketing Communications

Hi, I’m Ray Fouché! I established the HAT Lab to bring together researchers from diverse intellectual foundations to explore and understand key issues regarding the politics of science and technology as they relate to the past, present, and future of humanity. My major publications includes Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power (University of Minnesota Press, 2004), Technology Studies (Sage Publications, 2008), The Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (MIT Press, 2016), Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), and Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal (Stanford University Press, 2025). I am currently the Editor-in-Chief for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society (Oxford University Press).

My interests lie in understanding how we can utilize collective intelligence to leverage individual expertise and answer questions that demand input from multiple intellectual domains. To this end, my current work focuses on collaborative projects with the next generation of scholars producing transformative work. At Northwestern, I primarily work with graduate students in the Media, Technology, and Society (MTS), the Rhetoric, Media, and Publics (RMP), and the Science in Human Culture programs.

When I’m not thinking about questions that move me (and others), I like to spend time in the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province or skiing wherever I can find fresh snow. When I was much younger, I competed in the 1992 Olympic cycling trials. I’m not nearly as fast now, but do enjoy working up a sweat on a fat tire bike.

Northwestern University

Hi! I'm Isabella. I’m a journalist with a background in arts and culture research and reporting.

In my work, I’m particularly interested in studying the relationships between community and art-making, representations of gender and sexuality on screen, new and emerging digital technologies, and the cultural landscapes and aesthetics of film and documentary. My writing has been published in outlets such as WBEZ, Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, Paste Magazine, and more. Outside of journalism, I’ve worked in non-profits and in publishing.

In my free time, I’m probably watching movies, reading, exploring vintage and antique shops, or hanging out with my cat, Quill.

Colgate University

Assistant Professor, Film & Media Studies

Assistant Professor, Africana and Latin American Studies

Hey all, I’m Aaron! I’m a big-time sneakerhead with over 60 pairs of kicks in my collection. But shoes aren’t the only things running through my mind. When I’m not working on my latest book or research project, you can catch me bumping the latest music release (I’m learning to DJ!), watching some dope anime, or obsessing over NBA basketball. I love sitting down and getting to know people, especially over a nice glass of bourbon.

As an Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies and Africana & Latin American Studies at Colgate University, my research focuses on affective labor, popular culture, urban space and temporal flows, and the nexus between sports, science, and technology. Currently, I am working on my first monograph, Deadstock, A Philosophy of Sneakers in the Afterlife of Black Bodies, which articulates the intimate and undiscussed connections between sneakers as material objects and Black bodies. This project excavates sneakers from the strict confines of culture and fashion, asserting their existence as an object wherein bodies act and that acts upon bodies and spaces. Furthermore, this project hones the theoretical position that sneakers exist first and foremost as literal extensions of Black bodies, both sporting and cultural. One of Deadstock’s chapters, called “Hangtime Melancholia,” which explores the notion of hangtime, the physics-defying fantasy of a dunker’s trajectory, to its limit to consider the undiscussed connections in the American photographic pastimes of lynching and dunk photography was published in Cultural Studies.

University of Kentucky

Associate Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies

Associate Professor, African American and Africana Studies

Hi, I'm Aria S. Halliday. While research is my bread and butter, I ensure that actual great food is always close at hand. I love trying out new restaurants, experiencing diverse cuisines, and tending to my own garden while listening to the newest hip-hop album released.

As a researcher, I have been recognized as an award-winning author who specializes in the study of cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material, visual, and digital culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. I have published research in Cultural Studies, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Girlhood Studies, Palimpsest, SOULS, and forthcoming in Women, Gender, and Families of Color. I also authored Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2022), Black Girls and How We Fail Them (UNC Press, 2025), and was the editor of The Black Girlhood Studies Collection (Women’s Press, 2019). Throughout my career, I have been recognized as an Institute for Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellow (2020-2021), a Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (2022-2023), and a 2021 Stuart Hall Foundation x Cultural Studies Award winner for my article “Twerk Sumn!: Theorizing Black Girl Epistemology in the Body.” Currently, I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky working on a new project investigating Black Feminists freedom and Electric Vehicles.

Loyola University, Chicago

Lecturer, Department of Communication

Annyeong! I'm June Mia, and hold a PhD in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Illinois, Chicago. I joined the HAT Lab in the summer of 2024. When I'm not working on my book, following Twitch DJs, or reading about techno culture, I am busy being a mom of two boys.

My research investigates streaming and social networking sites, participatory platforms, and the intersections of gender, race, and policy. I’ve published a book chapter titled "DJ’s Gig: Affective Hip Hop Culture and Affordances of Participatory Platforms during a Global Pandemic" in Sustaining Black Music and Culture during COVID-19 #Verzuz and Club Quarantine, edited by Dr. Niya Pickett Miller. Currently, my work explores the affordances of Twitch.tv, focusing on Hip Hop DJs, cultural participation, and labor by investigating how Hip Hop DJs' tapped into cultural practices to re-imagine and appropriate a platform that was intended for gamers. My research utilizes a mixed-method approach of critical technocultural discourse analysis, participant observations, and interviews to examine the platform and the DJs. Ultimately, my interest is in understanding digital counter-cultures and communities and the way in which they form and thrive on digital platforms. 

Clemson University

Assistant Professor, Performing Arts (Audio Technology)

Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies (Global Black Studies)

Melvin Earl Villaver, Jr. is an expert in Hip Hop's cultural origins and the role of African American artists in music history. Since Fall 2023, he has been an assistant professor at Clemson University, blending practical skills in music production with scholarship.

Driven by a commitment to celebrating Black music, Villaver's research focuses on Blues Epistemology and Black musicians' artistry. He explores how modern trends elevate Hip Hop and aims to preserve these cultural narratives. His goal is to highlight Black music's role in history and inspire future scholars and musicians.

Northwestern University

Assistant Dean for Research, School of Communication

Professor of Instruction, Communication Studies

Sharra is the author of Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology (Lexington, 2008) and Toxic Shock: A Social History (NYU Press, 2018). She co-edited Feminist Technology (University of Illinois Press, 2010) and The Politics and History of Menstruation: Contextualising the Scottish Campaign to End Period Poverty (Open Library of Humanities, 2022).

She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Awards from the National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Global Midwest initiative of Humanities Without Walls, have supported her research.

She previously held faculty appointments in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Gender & Women’s Studies and Department of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the History Department at Purdue University, with affiliations in the School of Engineering Education.

She has appeared in interviews in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, Newsweek, BBC Radio 4, and Le Monde among others. Her current research revisits how stigma is communicated and challenged through menstrual products.

Northwestern University

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric, Media, and Publics

Hey, this is Genius Amaraizu, PhD researcher in the HAT lab at Northwestern. When you don't find me engaged in lab research, look outside, I'm making some videos for YouTube and other social media, or hanging out with friends, or just watching some documentaries.

As a Ph.D. researcher in the HAT lab at Northwestern University my research 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. My 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.

University of South-Eastern Norway

Ph.D. Candidate, Humanities, Cultural, and Educational Sciences

Hi, I'm Bright. I am a PhD candidate in the Sports Department at the University of South-Eastern Norway. When I am not pretending to be buried in research duties, I am usually at home minding my business. Fun fact: I work as a football agent too!

As a PhD candidate in the final year of my program at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), my research focuses on the use of self-tracking technologies in Ghanaian fitness spaces. This interest has led me to explore the near-exclusive emphasis on quantification at the expense of qualitative elements of fitness practices. My soon-to-be-published study is based on six months of fieldwork in Ghana, with extensive primary-source data in the form of interviews, field notes, and participant observation. Beyond my graduate work, I am also a member of the Norwegian Research School on Digitalisation, Culture and Society and the USN lead on the Nordplus project on Digitalisation in the Coaching Process across Nordic-Baltic countries.

Northwestern University

Ph.D. Candidate, Rhetoric, Media, and Publics

Hello, I’m Karl, a PhD candidate in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics housed in the Department of Communication Studies. I am a recipient of the Black Metropolis Graduate Assistantship, which is designed to increase capacity at Chicagoland’s Black archives and support projects that preserve and amplify Black histories and legacies. I’ve helped inventory, digitize, and assess Rebuild Foundation’s collections on the South Side of Chicago.

My research focuses on the sports arena as a protest site for Black athletes in America. I am interested in the strategies utilized by Black athletes, historically and in the present, to engage in social and political movements to articulate the reclamation of their humanity, fight for civil liberties, and as a form of civic engagement.iption goes here

Northwestern University

Ph.D. Student, Rhetoric, Media, and Publics

Hi! I'm Srish, a PhD student in Rhetorics, Media, and Publics at the Department of Communications at Northwestern U, and a Public Humanities Fellow with the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. I'm an experienced and awarded community justice advocate in gender, racial, and economic justice -- having spent about 10 years working in LGBTQIA+ justice and union movements across India and Australia.

My current research looks at the relationship of data visualization with public justice advocacy. I am working on tracing a genealogy of interactive maps and their use in political communication, particularly looking at maps created as acts of protest. I have published and presented work on the politics of information, education unionism, trans and gender diverse justice, and equity in technology. Most recently, I published a book chapter titled 'Misgendering and Assuming Gender while working with Low-Resource Language' with Sourojit Ghosh, in Routledge's Series of Translation and Interpreting Studies, where we also have upcoming work in the pedagogies of care in the use of machine learning. 

When I'm not working, I cook a lot of Bengali food, especially a pretty top-tier khichuri. 

Northwestern University

Ph.D. Student, Media, Technology, and Society

I’m Catalina, a Ph.D. student in Communication Studies at Northwestern. Outside of research, I enjoy binge-watching TV, painting, walking by the lake, and talking with my family in Chile. I strive to conduct research that benefits marginalized communities and creates tangible change.

As a Ph.D. student in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University my research centers on the role of media technologies in the lives of marginalized and racialized communities. Specifically, I focus on uncovering the reasons these communities engage with technology, how they perceive it, and the intricate dynamics of their online interactions. I use a mixed-method research approach to reveal the intricate ways in which these groups access, use, and (re)appropriate technologies. My work aims to shed light on the importance of digital inclusion and the empowerment of underrepresented voices in the media technologies landscape with the ultimate goal of influencing technology design and policy to better serve and represent marginalized communities.

Rensselear Polytechnic Institute

Ph.D. Candidate, Science and Technology Studies

Hi, I am Jonathan Givan, a Ph.D. candidate in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute from Chelsea, Alabama. When I am not dodging responsibilities or forgetting to submit paperwork, you can catch me bouldering at my local climbing gyms or obsessing over my well-seasoned cast iron.

As a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at RPI and a researcher in the HAT Lab at Northwestern, I focus on the relationship between music production, knowledge production, and cultural studies. My research looks at the Akai Midi Production Center and how its innovative adoption by Black Hip Hop producers reframed popular conceptions around the technology. Using mixed methods research, I study the history of the MPC within Hip Hop, the individuals and communities that solidified its popularity, and how corporate entities responded to the success of the MPC within Black music making. The ultimate goals of my research are to make accessible resources that display the innovative and diverse thought processes behind Hip Hop music and to help develop more inclusive and accessible spaces for communal music education.

Northwestern University, Journalism and Economics

Hi, my name is Ben Cooper! I am a junior studying Journalism and Economics at Northwestern and am a researcher in the HAT Lab. I am working alongside Dr. Rayvon Fouché and company to help make sense of the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) Market in College sports. With its genesis being so recent, this market is quickly changing and often misunderstood, so I hope to bring transparency to this understandably confusing market. 

As an avid college sports fan, I care deeply about both the treatment of players and the product put out, making NIL integral to events that bring us together like none other. University education and hyper-competitive athletics have been grouped for long enough that the bizarreness of their pairing often goes unnoticed, but NIL continues to raise questions of what it means to be a student-athlete and what that may look going forward.

Northwestern University, Communication Studies

Hi! I'm Leila Dhawan, a researcher in the HAT lab at Northwestern. When I'm not researching, I'm probably stopping a stranger to pet their dog or waiting in line for coffee. You can tell I'm from New Jersey because I walk fast and often complain about the bagels in Chicago. I'm involved in various campus initiatives, like marketing for the Northwestern Dance Marathon and the UNITY fashion show. I also work as a graphic designer and freelance writer for North by Northwestern Magazine and as a graphic designer for Northwestern Admissions.

Right now, I'm researching technology refusal with Professor Fouché. This topic intrigues me because of its huge impact on society and how it affects our self-perception. By understanding why some people push back against new technologies, I hope to gain insights into my own experiences and the broader societal effects. This research will help me in my future career in PR, marketing, and graphic design, giving me a unique perspective on human behavior. My ultimate goal is to graduate from Northwestern with a dual degree in Communications and Psychology, and then pursue an MBA. I love working with people and believe that understanding them is key to being effective and empathetic in my work. I'm passionate about appreciating and leveraging the unique qualities of individuals to enhance my work and build meaningful connections.

Northwestern University, Journalism and History

Hi, My name is Taylor Hancock! I’m a sophomore studying journalism and history, and pursuing a minor in global health studies. I spend a lot of my time reporting on Northwestern athletics through audio, video, print, and social media. I’m excited to work with Dr. Ray Fouché as a research assistant on the “Re-monetizing College Athletes: The Social Politics of Name, Image, and Likeness” project. 

Dr. Fouché’s research combines my passion for sports journalism with my interest in culture and societal change. As someone who consistently keeps up with the ever-evolving scene of sports, the opportunity to examine the media and social implications of NIL and create a deeper understanding of its impact on athletes and institutions is incredibly exciting! My commitment to advocating for greater inclusion in the sports industry will help me analyze how media coverage and commercialization are reshaping the identities of student-athletes and their relationships with universities.

Northwestern University, Communication Studies

Hi, my name is Chloe Sharpe! I’m a undergraduate research assistant in the HAT lab at Northwestern where I collaborate with Aria Halliday and Rayvon Fouché on The Black Woman’s Guide to Electric Vehicles project.  Outside of research, you can find me diving head-first into the deep end… literally! Despite my fear of heights, I have been a competitive diver for 8 years! 

As a first-year undergraduate research assistant in the HAT lab at Northwestern University, my research delves into the prerequisites for building a more equitable society. I’m driven by a deep interest in sustainable solutions and equity in technology which makes my work with Dr. Aria Halliday and Dr. Fouché, on Black Feminists freedom and Electric Vehicle usage and culture not only meaningful but also deeply fulfilling. I am committed to exploring how technology can be harnessed to create a more just and inclusive world, a mission that shapes both my current research and my future career aspirations.

Northwestern University, Communication Studies

Hi, my name is Karina Paulina Rosas and I am a first year Northwestern student studying Communication Studies with a double minor in Entrepreneurship and Art, Theory, and Practice. I am happy to be working closely with Dr. Rayvon Fouche on his Sneaker Culture and Digital Marketplaces lab. Outside of research, I am involved in several student organizations, from Form & Function Marketing Consultancy to UNITY Fashion Show. Outside of campus, you can probably find me in the pilates studio at BODYBAR or studying at my favorite coffee shop, Newport Coffee.

Right now, I’m working in Dr. Fouché’s lab, where I’ll be studying how price, marketing, and online conversations influence the popularity of sneakers over time. I’m really excited to learn more about how things like scarcity, design, and aesthetics make certain products so desirable. I think this research will help me understand why people are drawn to popular items, which is something I’ve always been interested in. My goal is to graduate from Northwestern with a degree in Communication Studies and work in marketing or PR for a luxury fashion brand. I love learning about how people connect with brands and products and how that connection shapes what they buy. I want to use what I learn to create meaningful and creative marketing strategies that inspire others.

Northwestern University, Communication Studies and Cognitive Science

Hi! I’m Chaeyeon Ryou, originally from Seoul, South Korea. I am a sophomore studying Communication Studies and Cognitive Science at Northwestern University. At the HAT lab, I’m currently exploring the concept of technological refusal, analyzing generational trends and mapping instances where people choose to opt out of technological systems and networks. This research not only sparks my curiosity about how technology shapes human behavior but also inspires me to think critically about how these insights can enhance marketing strategies. I believe it will give me a unique perspective on human behavior that will be invaluable in my future career in social media marketing.

Beyond the lab, I’m a marketing analyst at ISBE MARK, where I worked with Yasotorn, a local Thai restaurant, to develop their social media strategy through market research, competitor analysis, and engaging media content creation. I recently released my first Instagram reels for their account—go check them out if you’re a fan of Thai food! In addition, I’m a member of the Outgoing Global Exchange team at AIESEC, where I promote youth empowerment and leadership. My role involves publicizing events such as summer exchange programs, including abroad volunteer opportunities and work experiences offered by AIESEC, to Northwestern students through tabling and info sessions.

When I’m not researching or working on campus projects, I love exploring cute cafes, singing with friends, and capturing moments with my digital camera, whether it’s photos of my friends or scenic landscapes. These small joys remind me to slow down, appreciate the present, and find inspiration in everyday life.

Northwestern University, Communication Studies

Hello! My name is Ben Wajerski and I am pursuing a degree in Communication Studies at Northwestern University. I am working with Dr. Rayvon Fouché, Dr. Aaron Dial, and Karl Bullock, to better understand the current and evolving landscape of Name Image and Likeness in college athletics. Sports have long been a pillar in my life and although I no longer compete at the varsity level, the lessons it has taught me will endure. I continue to stay active through bike rides and jogs and am an avid fan of all professional sports.

Through Re-monetizing College Athletes: The Social Politics of Name, Image, and Likeness, we hope to situate NIL deals within the context of what it means to be a college athlete. Furthermore, we aim to facilitate discussion about the shifting balance between athlete and university as well as the reshuffling of the collegiate hierarchy. Much has changed during the early stages of this new era as the line between student and professional athlete continues to blur; it is our goal to project how this phenomenon will develop over the coming years.