LEAD PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Lisa (she/her/hers) is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Culture, and the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Since 1994, Nakamura has written books and articles on digital bodies, race, and gender in online environments, on toxicity in video game culture, and the many reasons that Internet research needs ethnic and gender studies. These books include, Race After the Internet (co-edited with Peter Chow-White, Routledge, 2011); Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Minnesota, 2007); Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (Routledge, 2002); and Race in Cyberspace (co-edited with Beth Kolko and Gil Rodman, Routledge, 2000). In November 2019, Nakamura gave a TED NYC talk about her research called “The Internet is a Trash Fire. Here’s How to Fix It."

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CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Rayvon Fouché (he/him/his) holds a joint appointment as Professor of Communication Studies and Professor in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrative Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. He authored or edited 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 4th Edition of the Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (MIT Press, 2016), and Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). He previously held faculty appointments in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the History Department and the Information Trust Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the American Studies program in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University, and was a postdoctoral fellow in African & African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently he served as Division Director of Social and Economic Sciences within the Directorate of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

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CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

M. Remi Yergeau (they/them/theirs) is a Canada Research Chair in Critical Disability Studies and Communication and associate professor in Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. Their scholarly interests include critical disability studies, rhetoric, digital studies, trans and queer studies, and neurodiversity. Yergeau currently leads the Digital Accessible Futures Lab and serves as a co-PI for Crip Computing: On Access Histories and Access Futures, which receives support from the Mozilla Foundation’s Responsible Computing Challenge. They are also a co-editor of Neurofutures along with Elizabeth Donaldson, Diana Paulin, and Ralph Savarese, which is forthcoming from MLA.

Yergeau is an autistic academic. Their knowledge of the autistic internet is informed by the scholarly and the personal: they once ran a neurodiversity blog, led a student chapter of an autistic-led org, and coordinated local protests. Their book, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Duke UP), is a winner of the 2017 Modern Language Association First Book Prize, the 2019 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, and the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award.

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CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Catherine Knight Steele (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park, where she directs the Black Communication and Technology Lab (BCaT) and the Digital Studies in Art & Humanities graduate certificate program. Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, specifically emphasizing Black culture, digital communication, and technology. She moves beyond examinations of representation in the media to consider the relationship between resistance and joy as technologies of liberation. Catherine’s research on the Black blogosphere, digital discourses of resistance and joy, and digital Black feminism has been published in such journals as Social Media + Society, Information, Communication and Society, Feminist Media Studies, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Her award-winning book, Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press 2021), examines the relationship between Black women and technology as a centuries-long gendered and racial project in the U.S. Her co-authored second book, Doing Black Digital Humanities with Radical Intentionality was published in 2023 with Routledge. Catherine is a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow working on the "Automating Black Joy" project, which critically examines the relationship between A.I., education, and Black joy.

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DISCO NETWORK ADMINISTRATOR

Ann Smith (she/her/hers) joined DSI as the DISCO Network Administrator in January 2024. She holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at UM. Outside of work, she loves to travel, enjoy good food, and spend time with friends and family.

Contact: annsmith@umich.edu

DISCO NETWORK PROGRAM COORDINATOR

Cherice Chan (she/they) joined the Digital Studies Institute to serve as the DISCO Network Program Coordinator in 2023. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2022 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Anthropology. Prior to coming to the DSI, Cherice served as the project coordinator and youth advisory board director for a research initiative about racial socialization processes among Asian American youth. Her research interests include the racial socialization of youth of color, racialized experiences of Asian Americans, and mainstream narratives about race, ethnicity, and culture. Outside of work, Cherice enjoys traveling, reading, collecting trinkets, and grocery shopping.

Contact: chericec@umich.edu

DISCO NETWORK GRANT INITIATIVES PROGRAM COORDINATOR

Giselle Mills (she/they) currently serves as the DISCO Grant Initiatives Program Coordinator. She joined the DSI in May of 2022 as the Marketing and Communications Assistant for the Digital IDEAS Summer Institute and later became an Undergraduate Student Writer for the DSI Newsletter. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction and High Honors in History, the Sweetland Minor in Writing, and a minor in Russian Language, Literature, and Culture. Following graduation, she served as the Program Assistant for Digital IDEAS 2023. Her scholarly interests include the history of fashion and textiles, archaeology, gender studies, and zoology. Outside of work, Giselle enjoys film photography, knitting, and poetry.

Contact: gimills@umich.edu

DISCO NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR

Atticus “AJJ” Spicer (they/he) serves as the DISCO Communications Coordinator. He joined DISCO in 2023 through the programming series Search Engines: Art, Tech, and Justice, for which they were an event planner and designer. Having graduated from the University of Michigan in 2024 with a B.A. in Film, Television, and Media and the Sweetland Minor in Writing, Atticus uses his skills in digital media production and analysis to further DISCO’s mission and reach. His research interests (fixations) are wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, but always center the principles of harm reduction, intersectional liberation, and public intellectualism. Outside of work, Atticus moonlights as a game dev, organizer, and creates comics.

Contact: ospicer@umich.edu

DISCO NETWORK PROGRAM ASSISTANT

Kaitlyn Gastineau (she/her) first joined the Digital Studies Institute in 2023 as the Technical Coordinator. In 2025, she began to serve as the DISCO Network Program Assistant. She is currently working towards a B.A. in Political Science and Psychology at the University of Michigan. The research topics that interest her are how institutions shape policies and everyday decision making. In her free time, Kaitlyn enjoys watching sports and spending time with friends outside.

Contact: kgastin@umich.edu

SEARCH ENGINES FACULTY LEAD

Jeff Nagy is an Assistant Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Critical Data Studies in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at York University. Previously, he was a DISCO Network Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he collaborated with scholars, artists, and policymakers to envision and build anti-racist and anti-ableist technological futures. He currently serves as faculty lead for Search Engines, a programming series at the University of Michigan centered around the arts, emerging technology, and social justice. He is a historian of computing and AI focused on the intersections between that history with disability and psychological and psychiatric science. He holds a PhD in Communication from Stanford University. His research has appeared in Just Tech, New Media & Society, Technology & Culture, and elsewhere.

GRADUATE PROGRAM ASSISTANT

Sam McCracken is a 6th-year PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature, as well as a student in the Graduate Certificate program in Digital Studies. His ongoing dissertation project, Virtually Disposable: A Theory of Digital Trash and the Question of Content, historicizes and critically interrogates shifting notions of digital disposability. That is to say, his research intervenes in and attempts to make sense of the curious ways in which immanently material digital artifacts are and are not considered disposable, as well as the environmental, aesthetic, and attentional implications of the same. His research interests span the fields of digital aesthetics, contemporary poetry and poetics, critical discard studies, environmental media studies, and translation studies. His research languages include Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English. He is currently based in São Paulo, Brazil, where he lives with his beloved gray tabby cat, Henri.

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM ASSISTANT

Atticus “AJJ” Spicer (they/he) serves as the DISCO Communication Coordinator. He joined DISCO in 2023 through the programming series Search Engines: Art, Tech, and Justice, for which they are an event planner and graphic designer. Having graduated from the University of Michigan in 2024 with a B.A. in Film, Television, and Media and the Sweetland Minor in Writing, Atticus uses his skills in digital media production and analysis to further DISCO’s mission and reach. His research interests (fixations) are wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, but always center the principles of harm reduction, intersectional liberation, and public intellectualism. Outside of work, Atticus moonlights as a game dev, organizer, and creates comics.

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM ASSISTANT

Cecilia joined the Digital Studies Institute as a program assistant and graphic designer for Search Engines in 2023. She lead the visual development of Search Engine’s zine, Search History, through her creation of fold-out promotional handouts and 3D assets for its digital and print publications. She is in her third year of undergraduate study pursuing a triple major in English, German, and Translation as well as a minor in Digital Studies. Her academic interests center on language, gender, and digital culture, particularly the intersection of identity and online presence. She looks forward to beginning thesis work on these topics in her upcoming senior year.