I’m the host and editor of The Data Fix podcast and editor of Heliotrope, an online journal that encourages experimental thinking through writing (managed and co-edited by Tessa J. Brown). Both are unaffiliated, independent projects.

I’m also an associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Communication (since 2019); on advisory board for The Johns Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory (since 2023); a part of the editorial team of the Journal of Environmental Media (since 2025).

I currently work as an Associate Professor (Film and Media) at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON).

***

Academic trajectory: Before relocating to Kingston, I was an Associate Professor in Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary. Before that, I held a tenure-track position at the Illinois Institute of Technology (now Illinois Tech), in Chicago. I’ve moved a lot - maybe too much.

My undergrad was at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, followed by a Graphic Design program at Algonquin college, in Ottawa. I did my graduate training at Concordia University, in Montréal: a Communication Studies Graduate Diploma (GrDip), an MA in Media Studies and a research-creation PhD in Coms. I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Curation at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Since 2012, my research has been on the environmental impacts and the political and social implications of data centers and data infrastructure. In 2019, with the amazing Sean Willett, I released a podcast series called The Data Center Industrial Complex. As an extension of research that looks at alternatives to water- and energy- intensive data storage, I’m a PI for a SSHRC IG project (2021-2026) about DNA-based data storage.