About Us

Jump to: Directors | Staff | Researchers | Research Assistants

Henry Jenkins III
Principal Investigator
Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities Professor of Literature and Comparative Media Studies
Jenkins is the principal investigator for Project NML, a MacArthur Foundation-funded project that develops curricular materials focused on promoting the social skills and cultural competencies needed to become a full participant in the new media era.

Henry Jenkins is the Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, and Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Jenkins writes writes regularly about media and cultural change at his blog, henryjenkins.org.

Jenkins has a MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Erin B. Reilly     
Research Director
Erin B. Reilly is a recognized expert in the design and development of thought-provoking and engaging educational content powered by virtual learning and new media applications. Before joining MIT, Erin co-founded and acted as CEO of Platform Shoes Forum (PSF), a non-profit organization that researches and develops digital learning platforms for youth. She is co-creator of PSF's model program Zoey's Room, a national online community for 10-14 year-old girls, encouraging their creativity through science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).  Zoey's Room has proven results in advancing STEM and Media Literacy skills.  In 2007, Erin received a national educational Leaders in Learning Award from Cable in the Classroom for her innovative approach to learning through Zoey's Room and was selected as one of the National School Boards Association's "20 to Watch" educators.  Erin is a graduate of Emerson College and has her Master of Fine Arts degree from Rockport College, a subsidiary of the International Film and Television Workshops.


STAFF

Anna van Someren
Creative Manager
Prior to working at MIT, Anna was Youth Voice Collaborative Program Coordinator at the YWCA Boston, where she developed new media curriculum and taught multimedia production workshops. She has taught Digital Editing and Video Storytelling at the college level and is also an accomplished commerical editor and award-wining video artist. Anna is a graduate of Colgate University and has her Master of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art.

Jenna McWilliams
Curriculum Specialist
Jenna taught English composition, literature, and creative writing at Suffolk University, Bridgewater State College, and Newbury College and at Colorado State University, where she earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and pursued interests in Surrealist art and literature and in zombie movies. She has also worked as a newspaper reporter, a groundskeeper, and a billing assistant at an emergency veterinary hospital; prior to these experiences, she helped to run a nonprofit consumer advocacy group out of the top floor of an abandoned warehouse in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Mike Rapa
Computer Support Assistant
As Computer Support Assistant, Michael Rapa is the technology liaison for NML. A graduate of The Art Institute of Boston, Rapa received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2007 with focus on Graphic Design and Digital Illustration. He is an avid member of the global video gaming community, regularly sacrificing several hours of his day to owning n00bs. His previous professional experience was as a Desktop, Lab Systems, and A/V Technician for Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

RESEARCHERS

Alice J. Robison
Academic Advisor
Alice J. Robison (Ph.D. in English, University of Wisconsin-Madison) advises the project on matters of academic areas of research being conducted by other MacArthur Digital Media and Learning grantees and suggests ways for the project to integrate that knowledge into its thinking and development processes. As academic advisor she also helps construct professional development, research and publication initiatives, working primarily with the full-time administrative staff. In addition to working with Project NML Alice also serves as Literacy Advisor to another MacArthur digital learning initiative tentatively called the Game School. Her personal scholarship involves trans-disciplinary work in writing, literacy-learning and pedagogy: in the fall of 2008 she will join the faculty of the English department at Arizona State University but will continue to consult with both Project NML and the Game School.

Katie Clinton     
Content Analyst   
Katie Clinton (Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison) brings her interest in digital technologies and her knowledge of learning and literacy theory to Project NML. As the content analyst, she is contributing to the process of figuring out how to apply a sociocultural and situated understanding of learning to the design of activities that will provide youth with opportunities to learn and practice social and cultural skills, as these skills take on meanings and values related to the new types of tools and contexts/places that digital technologies enable. Her research focuses on working out how recent research in the area of neuroscience sheds light on the new ways-of-meaning that videogames enable, and, in particular, on how these new kinds of discursive acts can be used to support learning in technology-based learning environments.

Clement Chau
Researcher
Clement is currently a doctoral student at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University working in the Developmental Technologies Research Group with Prof. Marina Bers. Clement's research interests include understanding how virtual environments and virtual communities can support the socio-emotional development of young people, and the extent to which youth can leverage the various resources on the Internet to engage in civic and social activities. Clement received his Master's in Applied Child Development from Tufts University and a B.A. in Music and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Kelly Leahy
Researcher
Kelly has worked on the development and production of children's media for the past ten years for such companies as Nickelodeon, PBS, and Discovery Kids. Professionally, she has collaborated on a wide range of projects, from animation to documentaries to live theatrical productions. Currently, Kelly is a full-time doctoral student at Harvard University, where her studies focus on how media and technology shape human development and cognition. Kelly holds a Master's degree in specialized studies in education from Harvard, and earned her Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University School of Communication. Her previous research work was with Project Zero on the Understandings of Consequence Project.

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

Debora Lui
MIT, BS Architecture and Management Science, 2003
Debora Lui is a 2003 alumna of MIT with a double major in architecture and management science, and a minor in theater. Deb has long been fascinated by the relationship between space and performance. As an undergraduate, Deb explored this interest by working as a researcher with the Interactive Cinema Group at the MIT Media Lab, and through the MIT Eloranta Undergraduate Research Fellowship, studying the relationship between performance and architecture in theater. Following graduation, Deb has gained experience in the arts (working at the Tony Award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theatre) and design (with Tom Ip & Partners Architects in Hong Kong). She has continued to pursue her interest in theater by working with several amateur and semi-professional performing groups as a director and an actor.  At CMS, Deb is interested in exploring the history of spectatorship and the sensory interfaces that audiences use to engage with media, particularly in how they can relate to our connection to architecture and our physical environment. Currently, she works as a research assistant with the New Media Literacies group and as a media analyst with the Convergence Culture Consortium at CMS.

Stephen Schultze
Calvin College, BA Computer Science and Philosophy, 2002
Stephen J. Schultze holds a 2002 BA in computer science and philosophy from Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI). Schultze has also served as a project director for nonprofit startup Public Radio Exchange and collaborated on projects at the MIT Media Lab. He organized the 2007 Beyond Broadcast conference which brought CMS together with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Yale Information Society Project. In the summer of 2007, he worked as a Legal Assistant for Google's Public policy team in Washington, DC. His research interests focus on the changing nature of communications regulation in the broadband era. His blog is called Managing Miracles.

Andres Lombana
Universidad de los Andes, BA Political Science and Literature, 2003
Andres Alberto Lombana graduated in 2003 with a double BA in political science and literature from Colombia's Universidad de los Andes. His interests are emphatically cross-media, and he has some significant experience with educational media applications. From 2001 to 2005, Andres worked for the Fundacion Universitaria Iberoamericana (FUNIBER), a Spanish electronic learning company active in Latin America. There, he administered and edited e-learning objects that were both adaptive and migratory, and worked to develop learning communities. He was awarded a fellowship to spend 8 months at FUNIBER's Barcelona headquarters where he worked on digital layout and publishing processes. Outside of the work environment, Andres has been active in small-scale cross-media creative activities including movies, music, still images, and text. In 2001, he co-founded Elektrodomestika, a cross-media laboratory which explores and experiments with the use of new technologies in art creation. His latest project, Cotidianity, is a computer operetta that explores digital storytelling. His digital video The Duel (stop motion animation) was selected as part of the first Latin American and Caribbean Video Art Competition, and shown in the International Development Bank's art gallery in Washington and the Ethnologischen Museum of Berlin. Interactive media production, creative educational strategies, and the discourse of globalization combine to form the core of what Lombana would like to pursue at CMS.

Talieh Rohani
Ryerson University, BFA Image Arts/Film Studies 2006
Talieh Rohani studied filmmaking at Soureh University in Tehran, Iran, before going on to do a BFA in Image Arts/Film Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto and to pursue an MFA in Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University. She has directed four short films and worked, variously, as a director, art director and production designer, cinematographer and editor. She is interested in the emergence post-revolutionary popular culture in lives of young Iranian women and in the larger impact of technology on the development of a new global imagination. She sees CMS as a place to broaden and strengthen the ideas and skills that she hopes to bring back to her flimmaking practice.

Deja Elana Swartz
University of Florida, BA English, 2002
Deja Elana Swartz grew up on a houseboat in Miami, Florida. She graduated with a B.A. with Highest Honors in English from the University of Florida in 2002. After graduation, she taught high school English in Houston, Texas as part of Teach For America. She's also worked in nonprofit development and in autism education and research.  Here at CMS, she is a researcher specializing in learning and user insights at Project New Media Literacies and serves as the liaison to the Harvard GoodPlay Project. She is fascinated by taste-making. Her own tastes currently include nail-art, knock-off fashion, fast food breakfast sandwiches, soap opera comic strips, and Tolstoy.