Three SJMC Graduate Students Win Holtz Center Fellowships

The Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies offers a program of two-year, top-up fellowships for continuing graduate students with research interests in the field of science and technology studies.

The 2020-2022 cohort includes four fellows, three of whom are School of Journalism and Mass Communication graduate students:

Xerxes Minocher – Xerxes is interested in how communities shape, and are shaped by, digital technologies. Their dissertation research explores how communities of practice respond to the emergence of AI technologies. Using case studies of both mundane and controversial instances of AI technology, this work reflects on the politics of knowledge at play in the development, adoption, and contestation of ‘AI’.

Yiping Xia – Yiping’s research looks to form a grounded understanding of people’s engagement with news, drawing from the long-standing emphases by STS on epistemology, expertise, and situated knowledges. Working with colleagues, he has also conducted and published studies on digital disinformation and journalist-audience relationships on social media.

Yidong (Steven) Wang – Informed by cultural studies and queer theory, Steven’s research focuses on communication ecology and community media. He has been working on a dissertation with LGBTQ communities in Beijing, China and Madison, Wisconsin. He has professional training in journalism and performed publicity work for multiple organizations.