The Annenberg School Welcomes New Visiting Scholars and Postdoctoral Fellows for 2025-26

As the 2025-26 academic year begins, many new visiting scholars and postdoctoral fellows are joining the Annenberg School for Communication and our various research centers. These scholars will research alongside and collaborate with Annenberg faculty, staff, and students for anywhere from one semester to several years. We are thrilled to welcome them!

Visiting Scholars

Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication

• Associate Professor of Journalism at Towson University Pallavi Guha‘s research interests include anti-rape and sexual harassment activism on mass media and social media platforms, political news engagement of women from diasporic communities, and gender roles in the electoral campaign and social media.
• Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications at The New School Julia Sonnevend studies media, culture, and public life.
• Associate Professor of Cinema in the Department of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Virginia Samhita Sunya’s scholarship takes feminist approaches to cross-border media histories.

Center for Media at Risk

• Arwa Mahdawi is a London-born, New York-based writer. Mahdawi writes a weekly column for The Guardian covering everything from politics to pop culture.
• j. Siguru Wahutu is an expert in the sociology of media, with an emphasis on genocide, mass violence, and ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and African Studies at Yale University.

Center on Digital Culture and Society

• Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Zhejiang Zhe Wang’s research concerns platform studies, game studies, and digital media studies.

Center for Information Networks and Democracy

• Tal Orian Harel is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She studies how digital communication and psychological processes shape political discourse, public opinion, and polarization in divided societies.

Health Communication and Equity Lab 

• Stella (Juhyun) Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Konkuk University. She conducts research on designing persuasive messages that can lead to behavior change, promote interpersonal communication, and remedy the effects of misinformation.
• Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Haifa Nehama Lewis-Persky aims to identify the factors that influence human behaviors and to promote positive behavior change through the design of strategic media campaigns.

Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics

• Assistant Professor at the University of Houston Libby Jenke studies questions of voter behavior, with an emphasis on affective polarization.

Media, Inequality & Change Center

• Duru Su Kadıoğlu is a Ph.D student and research assistant in media and communication studies at Galatasaray University. Her doctoral research investigates the political economy of journalism within the context of media policy and platformization.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Annenberg Public Policy Center

• Vartan Gregorian Postdoctoral Fellow Yijing Chen studies online political communication, political polarization, and belief systems.

Center on Digital Culture and Society

• Yena Lee is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Digital Culture and Society. Her research on social movements, creator culture, and fan activism examines how unorganized actors gain and translate influence into political power.

George Gerbner Postdoctoral Fellow 

• Recent Annenberg School graduate Baird Howland (Ph.D. '25) is the 2025-27 George Gerbner Postdoctoral Fellow. He researches political discourse, American media diets, and the role of the news media in contemporary politics.

Polarization Research Lab

• Polarization Research Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Sam Frederick examines how partisan social norms shape polarization.

Health Communication and Equity Lab 

• A recent graduate of the Annenberg School, Health Communication and Equity Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Xinyi Wang (Ph.D. '25) studies curiosity and information seeking, particularly in the health domain.

Media, Inequality & Change Center

• Media, Inequality & Change Center Postdoctoral Fellow Sydney Forde studies the critical political economy of communications, exploring power and contradictions within both media and policy spaces.