Graduate Students

Jason Begy graduated from Canisius College in Buffalo where he earned a BA in English (2004) and spent much of his time working for Canisius' Department of Information Technology Services. Begy's undergraduate thesis argued that the rules and mechanics of chess and go were a reflection of the religious traditions of Catholicism and Buddhism, respectively. In 2008, Begy completed an MS in Technical Communication at Northeastern University in Boston, where his coursework focused on information design for the Web and information architecture for internal corporate and university networks. He looks forward to continuing his work in games by focusing on abstraction and emergent game play.

Audubon Dougherty studied writing at Emerson College before transferring to Smith College to complete a degree in anthropology with a focus on visual culture (2002). This led her to the field of human rights, where she traveled to Southeast Asia in 2006 as a blogger and photographer to assess disaster relief projects assisting tsunami survivors. In 2007, she returned to Thailand to provide new media training for an organization serving Burmese migrants and undocumented workers. As a communications specialist for a labor union, she helped develop a new media program which utilized e-communication, streaming video and mobile messaging to organize 22,000 home care workers in Massachusetts. These professional experiences inspired her to pursue graduate study at CMS, where she plans to research the ways grassroots organizations can use accessible media tools to expand their online outreach, harness advocacy capabilities and communicate more effectively with their constituencies. Outside of work, Dougherty formed her own video production collective, producing and directing films for exhibition at festivals and on the web. Her website is at tapioca.tv.

Featured in the Fall 2009 issue of In Medias Res: "YouTube in the Amazon"

Madeleine Elish pursued extensive research in contemporary art practices, anthropology of technology and critical theory as an undergraduate at Columbia University (BA 2006). Beyond her coursework, she directed and acted in theater productions, curated art shows and taught in an after-school arts program. An internship during college turned into a job at the Whitney Museum of American Art where she wrote essays and curriculum guides based on the museum's art collection and published on the Whitney's website for students and teachers. Since graduating, Elish has also worked for the contemporary art gallery Gavin Brown's enterprise, NPR's On the Media, and most recently, worked as an editor for various websites published by Rodale. At CMS, her research revolves around the intersection of vision, perception, aesthetics and ethics, centering around the ways that new media alter the way we see the world.

Florence Gallez was a Moscow-based journalist for eight years, most recently as a freelance producer for CNN's Moscow Bureau. She has covered Russian politics, economy and culture for a variety of print, broadcast and electronic media organizations, including The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Moscow Times, and the U.S. publisher Bureau of National Affairs. She has also reported for the BBC World Service in Budapest and for the Russian daily Segodnya in London. These experiences have left her with a strong interest in understanding and circumventing various forms of government censorship of the news. At MIT she plans to develop a secure online space for media professionals and their audience to collaborate on news stories reporting and writing, which could be replicated in a variety of offline spaces in order to optimize flexibility and interference-free access.

She holds a BA in English and Russian from the University of London and a MSc in journalism from Boston University, with additional course work completed at Harvard University.

A lifelong Prince fan with an interest in copyright and cyber rights, she has covered Russia’s IP issues and legislation for BNA’s Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal, and in her spare time she dreams of creating the “ultimate Prince music distribution system.”

M. Flourish Klink earned an undergraduate degree in religion from Reed College in 2008, focusing on religious experience in virtual reality. Prior to college, she was one of the young Harry Potter fans featured in Henry Jenkins' book Convergence Culture, having co-founded a major Harry Potter fanfiction website at the tender age of thirteen. Today, she is on the board of directors for HPEF, Inc., a nonprofit organization that produces academic symposia on the Harry Potter books and cultural phenomenon. Her recent projects include research with Project New Media Literacies, various fiction projects (both traditional and interactive), and her master's thesis, which explores the topics of Twilight, lulz humor, and female fan culture. Her website is flourishklink.com.

Hillary Kolos completed a BFA at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU and worked in after-school programs, including one at the School of the Future, where she co-taught a high school filmmaking class. After graduating from college in 2002, she worked at a not-for-profit production company that produces documentaries on current issues in education for PBS. Seeking more experience in the classroom, she then worked as a media educator in New York City schools. She currently works as a media mentor for Adobe, advising teachers on how to incorporate media into their curricula. She was inspired to return to graduate school after reading the white paper produced by Project NML for the MacArthur Foundation. She has expressed a desire to do thesis work focused on efforts by Katie Salen to develop a game-design based high school in New York. In the future, she hopes to work as a consultant to help teachers incorporate new media literacy skills into their classrooms.

Michelle Moon Lee holds a BA in computer science and architectural studies from Brown University (2005). Her projects include "Brackets: Imagined and Real Architecture in the Han, Tang, and Liao Dynasties" with accompanying 3-D models which examines traditional Chinese architectural elements over time, a website focused on the history of pirates and junks in the South China Sea, an architectural history game for 4th-grade girls, and a research tool and serious game produced by Georgia Tech's Tennenbaum Institute. Her extracurricular interests include theatre, feminist and queer activism, and publishing. Recently, she worked on an augmented reality performance of "Woyzeck" and remediated the piece as an interactive Flash game. Lee is currently a prospective member of Quilted, a web design and development cooperative that works with social change and nonprofit organizations. Her research focus at CMS is educational and social awareness-related gaming, specifically the ways in which games can be used to explore and support social initiatives, issues, and problems. Her portfolio can be found at michellemoonlee.com.

Elliot Pinkus earned an undergraduate degree in information science at Cornell (BA 2008) which allowed him to focus on game design and development courses. He was a member of Cornell's first Experimental Game Play Project. He has created and implemented a game-design curriculum for Ithaca Middle School and High School students. For the past two summers, Pinkus has worked as a game designer contributing to the work of The Education Arcade - with a primary focus on designing puzzles for the game Labyrinth. He also consulted with one of the GAMBIT teams whose work was enmeshed with The Education Arcade. Beyond games, he has a strong interest in creative writing and narrative writing, including a growing fascination with how the visual storytelling strategies of comics and television create emotional engagement. His writing includes a discussion of Lawrence Lessig's views on how copyright laws impact cultural production.

Nick Seaver graduated with a BA in interdisciplinary literature from Yale (2007). As an undergraduate, his interest in sonic media led him to research the relationship between the technology of sound reproduction and social conceptions of "noise." At CMS, he is studying indeterminacy and control in sound transmission, the role of "skill" in aesthetic judgments, and the history of automatic musical instruments.

His academic work is supplemented by experiments in computer-aided composition that combine experimental music processes with pop music materials. In addition to his work in sonic media, Nick has a longstanding interest in the history of the book, which led him to spend a year training full-time as a hand bookbinder at Boston's North Bennet Street School.

Nick blogs about sound at noiseforairports.com.

Sheila Murphy Seles earned a BA in American Studies and Theatre from Middlebury College in 2005. Her undergraduate research culminated in a thesis project on the importation of the British television show Absolutely Fabulous. After graduating, Seles interned for the television show The Shield and worked at the Chicago Humanities Festival. Recently, Seles worked as an Executive Research Intern at The Advertising Research Foundation and as an intern at Turner Broadcasting. Her current work for CMS and The Convergence Culture Consortium examines the television industry with a special focus on the changing business of television research.