Fellows
Photo Credit (top image): Caroline McFarland / Unsplash
2026 Fellows
Ashia Aubrey
American University
Ashia Aubrey is a doctoral student at the School of Communication at American University researching the intersection of media, technology and democracy. Her work explores how society interacts with digital platforms and their impact on democratic systems, specifically examining social media’s influence on election integrity and regulatory vacuums in media policy. She is equally interested in the media-use patterns of underrepresented communities, exploring intersectional themes such as the nuances of digital culture and online representation. Currently, she applies her expertise in media policy as a Research Fellow at the Internet Archive.
Prior to American University, Aubrey received her M.A. in Integrated Media Communications from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her B.S. in Strategic Communication from Hampton University. During her early career, she worked in strategic communications and journalism, serving as a television reporter and a digital communications specialist, translating complex policy research into accessible content for educators and stakeholders.
Ashia Aubrey will be a fellow at Public Knowledge.
Sheila Lalwani
University of Texas at Austin
Sheila B. Lalwani is ABD in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the Moody College of Communication. A recipient of the prestigious Graduate School Mentoring Fellowship and the Continuing Fellowship, Sheila conducts research on comparative media law within the U.S. and the European Union. She has presented research at Harvard Law School, the Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference at Yale Law School, and the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at Oxford University. She has published in Surveillance and Society, the Communication Law Review, the Journal of Information Policy, and the Routledge Series on Journalism. A former Fulbright Scholar to Germany, Sheila graduated with a Master's in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Sheila looks forward to spending her summer as a fellow with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Her primary goal is to support efforts to understand and map global threats against freedom of expression, digital rights, and journalists. Over the course of her 12-week internship, Lalwani intends to research regulatory efforts aimed at addressing media and communications in the digital and physical realms at regional, national, and international levels. These efforts encompass artificial intelligence, digital surveillance, spyware, and other harms to digital rights. Her EFF internship represents an extension of her doctoral research that has focused on technology and law policy. She has researched AI policy, digital surveillance and human rights, and the impact of the European Media Freedom Act on journalists, journalism, and freedom of expression. Through this experience, she aims to build on EFF’s substantial expertise concerning surveillance, platform regulation, and user rights. Her goal is to understand how complex and intricate technical and legal queries are translated into litigation, advocacy, and educational resources for broader publics by collaborating with attorneys, technologies, and activists.
Felicia Lu
University of Southern California
Felicia Lu is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She aims to examine how the rise of AI-driven technologies are beginning to influence, create, and/or maintain parasocial relationships. Furthermore, she is interested in how such processes affect the psychological well-being of users when used as a source of emotional support and companionship, for better and for worse.
Felicia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin with a minor in Educational Psychology. She continued her education at UT and received a Master of Arts in General Psychology. During her years of graduate study, she worked as a teaching assistant for various courses ranging from Psychological Methods and Statistics to Psychopathology. Moreover, she gained valuable experience working in a clinical setting as a graduate student therapist, where she utilized a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach to treat anxiety-related disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Felicia Lu will be a fellow at Ranking Digital Rights.
Cameron Moy
University of Pennsylvania
Cameron Moy is a first year Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He employs mixed methods research to unpack disparate impacts of digital platforms and technologies on communities of color. Building on frameworks of racial capitalism and critical digital studies, Cameron aims to promote accountability of major players in the platform space to ultimately imagine and realize a more just and equitable digital future.
Prior to joining Annenberg, Cameron graduated from the University of Michigan School of Information. While completing his undergraduate, he engaged in a diverse array of research, collaborating with the Race and Data Justice Lab; Social Innovations Group; and Accountability, Non-Discrimination, Inclusion, and Employment Lab. His projects ranged from understanding the impacts of Yelp’s Black-owned attribute on Black-owned restaurants to disentangling Detroit residents’ perceptions of community safety and surveillance to imagining a society with community-based policing.
Cameron Moy will be a fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology.
Christine Phan
University of Pennsylvania
Christine (Chris) Phan is a Ph.D. student in the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies how digital access affects information disorder in migrant communities and the development of community-owned digital tools.
Prior to joining Annenberg, Phan worked at the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), managing their technology policy and disinformation body of work. At the McCoy Center for Ethics at Stanford University, she led the development of case studies in ethics in technology, and through the Greenlining Institute, managed a city-wide program to close the digital divide in collaboration with community organizations in Oakland, California.
Christine Phan will be a fellow at Free Press.
Abby Simmerman
Pennsylvania State University
Abby Simmerman is a doctoral student in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, where she holds the Pioneers Fellowship and Graduate University Fellowship. Her research focuses on the critical political economy of telecommunications industries and infrastructures domestically and internationally. She is especially interested in policy impacts on traditionally marginalized communities.
Simmerman's research highlights the importance of storytelling and qualitative methodology in policy research. Her interests include rural media access, critical political economy of the media, especially at the intersection of care industries and media policy.
Working with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, Abby is excited to participate in work exploring the digital divide and innovative broadband policy solutions. She hopes to bring her experience researching the critical political economy of broadband and to more fully understand the policy environment.
Lauren Tokos
University of Pennsylvania
Lauren Tokos is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication, where she is a member of the Media, Inequality, and Change Center (MIC) and Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC). Tokos’ previous research has focused on the political economy of knowledge production, and intelligence agencies’ suppression of media reform efforts in the 1930s and 40s. She is particularly interested in the origins of anti-fascism in communication research, and the role of organized labor in facilitating change within media industries.
Prior to joining the Annenberg School, Tokos obtained her B.A. in Media Studies from the University of Oregon and Robert D. Clark Honors College. As an undergraduate, Tokos worked on several research projects related to media history, feminist pedagogy, and esports. Her undergraduate thesis explored the political economy of academic publishing through in-depth interviews with editors of media studies and communication journals.
Lauren Tokos will be a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Sui Wang
University of Southern California
Sui Wang is a Ph.D. student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Her research interests concern the ecology of intimate publics and the ways intimate relations are performed via digital mediations. Informed by STS and digital ethnography, her research looks at how the technologization of senses and social rituals rework the structure of feelings. She has received her M.A. in East Asian Area Studies with a graduate certificate in Digital Media and Culture from USC, during which she conducted her thesis research on diasporic radio. She holds a B.A. in Economics from China.
Prior to her master's study, she worked as a journalist for different media outlets in mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States. Apart from her academic life, she volunteers at film festivals and photo labs. She also contributes to a newsletter covering today’s technoculture.
Sui Wang will be a fellow at Georgetown Law's Institute for Technology Law & Policy.
Yuan Xu
University of Pennsylvania
Yuan Xu is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication. Her work examines how people engage in activism and express cultural identity through everyday life, both online and offline. She is particularly interested in the human discourse in/on social movements and the small but powerful ways people make their voices heard. Yuan’s previous work focuses on posters at Philadelphia’s #SaveChinatown/NoArena protest marches as well as online debates that spark wider conversations. She is interested in uncovering how these ordinary acts can build solidarity to make social change and evolve across generations. By studying how activism is embedded in daily life and cultural contexts, she seeks to understand how Asian communities create spaces of resistance and belonging beyond traditional forms of protest.
Yuan Xu will be a fellow at Free Press.
Past Fellows
Anjali DasSarma, University of Pennsylvania, Free Press
DongWook Jeong, Pennsylvania State University, Benton Institute for Broadband and Society
Dien Luong, University of Michigan, U.S. Agency for Global Media
Alphoncina Lyamuya, University of Southern California, World Benchmarking Alliance
Afrooz Mosallaei, Rutgers University, Free Press
Roxana Muenster, Cornell University, Brookings Institute
Vanessa Nyarko, University of Minnesota, Public Knowledge
Stephen Yang, University of Southern California, Center for Democracy and Technology
Ahmed Alrawi, Pennsylvania State University, Benton Foundation
Talia Berniker, Cornell University, Federal Communications Commission
Timilehin Durotoye, Pennsylvania State University, Open Markets
Emilie Grybos, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Democracy and Technology
Kyooeun Jang, University of Southern California, Brookings Institution
Anirban Mukhopadhyay, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, United States Agency for Global Media
Jeanna Sybert, University of Pennsylvania, Free Press
Benjamin P. Tetteh, Syracuse University, United States Agency for Global Media
Lucas Wright, Cornell University, National Telecommunications and Information Administration
Soyun Ahn, University of Southern California, Brookings Institution
Sydney Forde, The Pennsylvania State University Common Cause
Assil Frayha, University of Pennsylvania, Center for the Study of Responsive Law
Juan Ortiz Freuler, University of Southern California, Open Markets Institute
Joshua Jordan, Louisiana State University, The Democracy Collaborative
Louisa Lincoln, University of Pennsylvania, American Journalism Project
Rae Moors, University of Michigan, Ranking Digital Rights
Adetobi Moses, University of Pennsylvania, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs
Arijit Paladhi, Indiana University, Free Press
Alejandro Alvarado Rojas, University of Southern California, Open Technology Fund
Erika Solis, The Pennsylvania State University, Ranking Digital Rights
- Sanjay Jolly, University of Pennsylvania, Public Knowledge
- Antoine Haywood, University of Pennsylvania, Alliance For Community Media
- Florence Madenga, University of Pennsylvania, United States Agency for Global Media
- Ryan Wang, Pennsylvania State University, National Digital Inclusion Alliance
- Chioma Woko, University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs
- Maria Skouras, University of Texas at Austin, Advisory Council for Public Diplomacy
- Christoph Mergerson, Rutgers University, Brookings Institution
- Chloé Nurik, University of Pennsylvania, Federal Communications Commission
- Azeb Madebo, University of Southern California, Ranking Digital Rights
- Danyel Ferrari, Rutgers University, The U.S. National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites
- Lauren Bridges, University of Pennsylvania, Open Markets Institute
- Yang Bai, Pennsylvania State University, National Digital Inclusion Alliance
- Thomas Billard, University of Southern California, National Center for Transgender Equality
- Richelle Crotty, University of Texas – Austin, Free Press
- Nathaniel Ming Curran, University of Southern California, Korean Economic Institute of America
- Eric Forbush, University of Pennsylvania, Brookings Institution
- Anna Loup, University of Southern California, Center for Democracy and Technology
- Paul Popiel, University of Pennsylvania, Free Press
- Emily Saidel, University of Michigan, National Association of Broadcasters
- Jana Wilbricht, University of Michigan, National Digital Inclusion Alliance
- Joseph Yoo, University of Texas – Austin, New America/Ranking Digital Rights
- Hyeri Jung, University of Texas – Austin, USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy
- Hyun Tae (Calvin) Kim, University of Southern California, Sister Cities International
- Jillian Kwong, University of Southern California, National Institutes of Health
- Rachel E. Moran, University of Southern California, Campaign Legal Center
- Revati Prasad, University of Pennsylvania, New America Foundation & Ranking Digital Rights
- Matt Reichel, Rutgers University, Free Press
- Sonia Jawaid Shaikh, University of Southern California, World Bank
- Alex Williams, University of Pennsylvania, Pew Research Center
- Opeyemi Akanbi, University of Pennsylvania, New America Foundation
- Alexis D. Schrubbe, University of Texas – Austin, Common Cause
- Douglas Allen, University of Pennsylvania, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
- Cat Duffy, University of Southern California, Department of Health and Human Services
- Katherine Elder, University of Southern California, National Institute of Health
- Michelle Forelle, University of Southern California, Common Cause
- Brandon Golob, University of Southern California, Institute for Public Representation – Georgetown Law
- Nicole Hentrich, University of Michigan, National Center for Lesbian Rights
- Nathalie Marechal, University of Southern California, New America Foundation
- Aalok Mehta, University of Southern California, Public Knowledge
- Angeline Sangalang, University of Southern California, Department of Health and Human Services
- Xin Wang, University of Southern California, World Bank
- Alex Williams, University of Pennsylvania, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism
- Deepti Chittamuru, University of Pennsylvania, World Bank
- Nikita Hamilton, University of Southern California, Common Cause
- Tim Libert, University of Pennsylvania, New America Foundation
- Aalok Mehta, University of Southern California, Free Press
- Kitior Ngu, University of Michigan, New America Foundation
- Benjamin Pearson, University of Michigan, Internews
- Laura Silver, Penn Annenberg placed at State Department
- Katie Allen, University of Pennsylvania, Internews
- Katherine Holland, University of California – Santa Barbara, Consumers Union
- Dam Hee Kim, University of Michigan, Federal Communications Commission
- Aalok Mehta, University of Southern California, New America Foundation
- Brice Nixon, University of Colorado – Boulder, Media and Democracy Coalition
- Jaclyn Selby, University of Southern California, Center for Democracy and Technology
- Jason Smith, George Mason University, New America Foundation
- Sarah Stonbely, New York University, New America Foundation
- Russ Newman, University of Southern California, Federal Communications Commission
- Seyram Avle, University of Michigan, Internews and the Aspen Institute
- George Nardis, University of Michigan, Alliance for Community Media
- Ann-Katrin Arnold, University of Pennsylvania, World Bank
- Matt Blanchard, University of Pennsylvania, Federal Communications Commission
- Brett Bumgarner, University of Pennsylvania, Representative Maurice Hinchey‘s office (D-NY)
- Russ Newman, University of Southern California, New America Foundation
- Elliot Panek, University of Michigan, Media and Democracy Coalition
- Olesya Venger, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Digital Democracy
- William Youmans, University of Michigan, Senator Bernie Sanders’ Office (I-VT)
- Hope Cummings, University of Michigan, Representative Maurice Hinchey‘s office (D-NY)
- Antonio Lambino, University of Pennsylvania, World Bank
- Sascha Meinrath, University of Illinois, Telecommunications Fellow (long term fellowship)
- Russ Newman, University of Southern California, Senator Dick Durbin’s office (D-IL)
- Mario Rodriguez, University of Pennsylvania, Senator Bernie Sanders’ Office (I-VT)
- Brian Dolber, University of Illinois, Representative Diane Watson’s office (D-CA)
- Kamilla Kovacs, University of Illinois, Representative Maurice Hinchey’s office (D-NY)
- Victor Pickard, University of Illinois, Representative Diane Watson’s office (D-CA)
- Ben Scott, University of Illinois, Representative Bernie Sanders‘ Office (I-VT)