Leadership Team
Conference Chair
Stephanie Flores-Koulish, PhD
Dr. Stephanie Flores-Koulish has been involved with media literacy since the mid-1990s while studying for her PhD in Curriculum & Instruction at Boston College, where she focused her dissertation work on the topic as it related to preservice teachers. While there, she also participated in the Felton Media Literacy Scholars program with Dr. Renee Hobbs. Since then, while at Loyola, she has piloted & taught a media literacy course for graduate students who are practicing teachers and has conducted action research on and with her students. She also has research and teaching interests and publications on the topics of identity and transracial/cultural adoptees, education policy, urban education, and critical multicultural education. Her research provides her with many opportunities to practice engaged scholarship in and around Baltimore City. Flores-Koulish is also an alumna and mentor of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT) out of Phillips Academy.
Research Chair
Dr. Emily Bailin Wells
Emily Bailin Wells holds an Ed.D. in Communication & Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Master in Education, Culture and Society from UPenn. She is an adjunct assistant professor at Teachers College and New York University, where she teachers courses such as Culture, Media, & Education; the History of Communication; and Document Design & Data Visualization. Her research areas include critical media literacy education, using multimodal storytelling practices as a means of social justice pedagogy, and supporting anti-racist work amongst White people. Emily is the founder of HOLDING | SPACE: De/Centering Whiteness, a comprehensive dialogue and artifact-based program designed to support White people, specifically (but not exclusively) White women, in deep and authentic racial identity exploration as a starting point for actively engaging in anti-racism.
Michael Anderson
Assistant Research Chair
Michael is a scholar rooted in the Black Radical Tradition. He is devoted to studying the way power informs education systems across the world in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Michael writes and performs poetry, loves painting, reading Toni Morrison novels, and biking across the city.
Azsaneé Truss
Assistant Research Chair
Azsanee Truss is a Ph.D. Student in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She also recently graduated with her M.A. in Instructional Technology & Media from Teachers College, Columbia University. She studies youth critical media literacy practices from a cultural studies perspective. As a multimodal scholar, Azsaneé is especially interested in the ways in which media-making acts as a teacher of critical media literacy skills.