Graduate Scholar Recipients at ontheimage

Graduate Scholar Recipients

Fiona Cox
Fiona Cox is a Postgraduate Research Fellow and PhD candidate in the Film and Television Studies Department at the University of Warwick. She began higher education studying British and American Literature at Oxnard Community College in California before returning home to the UK and completing her Undergraduate and Masters Degrees in the Film and Television Department at the University of Warwick. Fiona is interested in work on costume, gender, sexuality, feminist perspectives, performance and stars within theatre, film, and television. She is particularly fascinated by studio-era Hollywood as well as recent ‘quality’ American television. Her PhD thesis looks at the costuming of lesbian characters in film and on television and includes an audience research project which aims to analyze how the costuming of female homosexual identities in contemporary visual cultures resonates within lesbian lives and contributes to the politics of personal dress-sense. When not engaged in academic research, Fiona spends a lot of time involved in staging musical and theatrical productions and is co-founder of a production company set up to take shows to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Jordan DeLong
Jordan DeLong is a PhD Candidate in Psychology at Cornell University. He was born in Indiana and eventually attended Indiana University, earning dual degrees in Psychology and Cognitive Science. Working within Thomas A. Busey’s Lab sparked Jordan’s interest in electroencephalography, expertise in the human visual system, and how to win games of Halo. Cornell was a natural fit for graduate school; Jordan was quickly engaged in doing research on new areas of interest including film. When James Cutting, former editor of Psychological Science and film buff, came to Jordan with an interest in doing ‘EEG on film’ a new line of research was born. Current work is attempting to expand our knowledge of how film can manage to interface so nicely with attention and memory within the visual system.

Antonia Felix
Antonia Felix is the bestselling author of fifteen nonfiction books, including Sonia Sotomayor: The True American Dream (Berkley 2010), Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story (Newmarket Press) and Andrea Bocelli: A Celebration (St. Martin’s Press). A frequent speaker on women in politics, she has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, PBS, SkyNews and many other TV and radio media networks and delivered lectures at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, Columbia-Montour Women’s Conference, Ozark Writer’s Conference and other venues. Ms. Felix also writes a column on energy and environmental issues for the historic Emporia Gazette in Kansas. She received an M.A. in English from Texas A&M University-Kingsville and in 2010 will earn an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Wichita State University.

Sanaz Hosseinabadi
Sanaz Hosseinabadi is a designer and theorist interested in the intersections between the sacredness in geometrical forms and Architecture from ancient time to recent. She completed a MA in Construction Project Management, a BA in Interior Architecture, and a Diploma in Graphic Design. She is currently completing her PhD in Architecture and Teaching History and Theory to first and third year Interior architecture students at the University of NSW. Sanaz has designed and managed a range of creative projects from commercial interiors to public art projects and residential projects.

Laura Noren
Laura Noren is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at New York University where her interests focus on the relationship between design and social behavior, especially as mediated by digital technologies. Her dissertation uses ethnography to explore the way professional groups use tools and non-verbal communication techniques to collaborate in the production of chamber music, architecture, and digital media. She is also deeply interested in how social scientists can better use information graphics to make their findings more accessible to broader publics. She earned undergraduate degrees from MIT in Comparative Media Studies and the History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture before moving to New York.

Xin Wang
Xin Wang is a PhD candidate in the School of Information Science & Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri. She received a master’s degree in Communication and a master’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin –Stevens Point. Her research interests include image indexing and retrieval, Human-Computer Interaction, Human Information Behavior, user studies, methodological studies in usability, and digital libraries.

Wenjia Yang
Wenjia Yang is Master Candidate in Mass Communications Department at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and works as a research assistant. She is an exchange student from China and received the Global Awareness Scholarship in 2007, which has not only given her the opportunity to pursue dual degrees in undergrad but has also broadened her understanding on cultural study. She has published in the Social Science Journal of the Colleges of Shanxi, China (2008) and was accepted for a paper presentation at the Second International Workshop organized by the International Center for Chinese Studies (2010). Her current research for her thesis is focused around the topic of the construction of Chinese Social Network Services and the changing Chinese culture.

Vera Zambonelli
Vera Zambonelli returned recently from Tokyo, Japan where she spent two months as Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University, for fieldwork and filming. She is a doctorate candidate at the UH Department of Urban and Regional Planning and her research interests lay in examining processes of placemaking and everyday cosmopolitanisms. Vera holds a Bachelor Degree in Japanese Studies from the University of Venice, a Diploma in Advanced International Studies with a focus on Latin American Studies from the SAIS Johns Hopkins Bologna Center and a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the Johns Hopkins University. As Associate Director of the Filmmaking for Social Research Program at the Globalization Research Center she is co-teaching a class on Imaging the City. Vera is the creative director and founder of the annual Diversity in Place Film Festival and Conference now at its 3^rd annual edition, involved with Girl Fest, and currently establishing Women in Filmmaking, an artists’ collective based in Honolulu, Hawaii that provides mentoring, peer support, and a place for women filmmakers to do work-in-progress screenings and discussions of their work and ideas.