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Ana Andjelic 
Ana Andjelic is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the New
School in New York and is writing her dissertation on digital branding. Her
project explores how digital media transform the role of brands in managing
relations between consumers and the products/services they use. To research
this question, Ana focused on how digital marketing agencies design for
exchanges of information between products and consumers. She has conducted
field research in the New York-based digital marketing firms Razorfish and
HUGE,Inc. Ana's paper, 'Transformations in the Media Industry: Customization
and Branding as Strategic Choices for Media Firms' was recently published in
Management and Innovation in the Media Industry edited by Cinzia Dal Zotto
and Hans van Kranenburg, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008.
Katherine Brown
Katherine is a third-year Ph.D. student in Communications at Columbia.s School of Journalism. Her research interests lie at the intersection of global and domestic public opinion, media, and U.S. foreign policy. Professionally, Katherine has worked at the National Security Council under the Clinton and Bush Administrations and, from 2003-2004, spent a year advising on communications and public events at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Through her roles with the NGOs Operation Smile and The Asia Foundation, she has worked throughout Asia, most recently advising on media-related issues in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. She is a New Ideas Fund Fellow, Truman National Security Fellow, and holds the 2009 Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing from Columbia.s Journalism School. Katherine has a B.A. in International Affairs from The George Washington University and an M.A. in Communications from Columbia University.
Victor
Corona   Laura
Forlano is a 1st year Ph.D. student in Communications at Columbia
University. Her research interests include communications technology,
organizational innovation and East Asia. More specifically, she is
interested in applications of new media and new organizational forms
that incorporate positive social outcomes into international communications
technology policymaking. Forlano is the Project Manager for the Information
Technology and Social Transformations program at the Social Science
Research Council. She is currently writing a chapter on "The Emergence
of Digital Government: International Perspectives" for Digital
Government: Principles and Best Practices. She is the Technology
Columnist for GothamGazette.com, a New York City news and policy
Web site. Forlano has consulted for international organizations including
the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union and United Nations.
She received her B.A. in Asian Studies from Skidmore College, a Diploma
in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University School
of Advanced International Studies Bologna Center and her M.I.A. from
the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
Tom Glaisyer
Tom Glaisyer is a third year student in interdisciplinary PhD. program in
Communications at the Graduate School of Journalism. His research interests
lie at the nexus of social media, international affairs, communities, and
social change. He is currently working his on a research project looking at
the role of social media and public diplomacy and beginning his dissertation
research. Prior to beginning the PhD Tom worked in Washington DC
facilitating the development of collaborative policy networks. Prior to
this he worked as a management consultant and project manager in the private
sector an in the UK, where he was born, Eastern and Western Europe and the
United States in a wide range of industries. He holds a Masters in
International Affairs from The School of International Affairs at Columbia
and a BEng and BCom in Manufacturing Engineering and Economics from the
University of Birmingham (England).
Lucas Graves
Lucas Graves is a doctoral student in Communications at Columbia
University. Lucas's research interests lie at the intersection of
media technology, political communications, and news; his dissertation
research uses network analysis to study structural changes in the
current-affairs ecosystem. Lucas also holds a Preceptor Fellowship,
teaching "Contemporary Civilization" as part of Columbia's Core
Curriculum. As both reporter and analyst Lucas has covered media and
technology for more than a decade on behalf of various publications
and research firms; his work appears often in Wired Magazine. He
received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago
and an M.S. from Columbia's School of Journalism.
Hawley Johnson
 Hawley Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in communications at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her research interests include nationalism and journalism’s role in democratization processes, post-conflict reconstruction, and in transitional societies. From 2000-2004 she was the Associate Director of the Media and Conflict Resolution Program at New York University's Department of Journalism where she managed a series of grants from the U.S. Department of State to improve reporting on human rights and diversity issues in Southeastern Europe. In Cooperation with COI she is currently working on a study which will analyze the capacity of local media development NGOs in Southeastern Europe to become self-sustaining through organizational innovation and the formation of local and transnational networks. Her dissertation research explores the impact of media development policies in the former Yugoslavia. She received a B.A. cum laude from the American University School of International Service, an M.I.A. from the School of International and Public Affairs and a Harriman Certificate from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
John Kelly
 John
Kelly is a researcher at Columbia's Interactive Design Lab and a Ph.D.
student in Communications. His research interests include design processes
and the development of content for interactive television and mobile
devices. Kelly has focused on the innovative adaptation of emerging
digital technologies to the demands of professional media production
during his twelve years as a sound designer and producer of film,
music, video and digital effects. In 1995, Kelly became Director of
Digital Media for Columbia's School of the Arts, with the responsibility
of integrating digital tools into the school's graduate programs in
Film, Visual Arts, Theatre and Writing. That year he led the Film
division to become the first graduate program in the nation to make
nonlinear technologies part of basic training and helped the Visual
Arts program make digital arts part of its core curriculum. In 1996,
he created the School's curriculum for interactive media, establishing
Interactive Design as the school's newest area of study. In 1999,
Kelly shifted his focus from teaching to research, joining IDL to
help develop the formal study of Interactive Design. He received his
B.A. from Columbia University.
Marissa
King 
Elena Krumova is a PhD candidate in the sociology department at
Columbia University. Her research interests include organizational
learning and innovation, forms of governance, social networks
theory, globalization, and local development. Currently, she is
focusing on projects as a new form of organizing collaborative work
both within and across formal organizations. She would like to
further expand this research into a comparative study of regional
development projects in Eastern Europe. Elena received an MBA
degree from City University of New York and a BA in economics from
the American University in Bulgaria.
Daniel Kutz
Daniel Kutz is a doctoral student at the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, Bloomington . His research interests lie in Human-Computer Interaction and Information Visualization. Specifically, he is focusing on how technology-mediated interaction between participants is guided by studying the social norms within a group, affordances provided by the human-computer interface, visualization of group activities, representation of members, and the underlying system architecture. In collaboration with COI, he is currently researching how best to analyze, summarize, and archive the large influx of heterogeneous citizen input and commentary received in regard to the post 9/11 rebuilding process. He earned a M.S. in Computer Science from Binghamton University.
Rosemary McGunnigle
Rosemary McGunnigle is a second year Ph.D. student in sociology at
Columbia University. Her current research explores immigrant business
owners, social network ties and political action in suburban
immigration gateways. As an undergraduate, Rosemary did research on
migration, work, ethnic and labor relations and rural/urban poverty in
Adams County, Pennsylvania; Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican
Republic; and Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. Upon receiving a B.A. in
Latin American and Latino Studies from Dickinson College in 2001,
Rosemary was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to research German youth,
xenophobia and national identity in Leipzig, Germany in 2001/2002.
Before beginning graduate study, she studied digital filmmaking at the
NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Olivia Nicol
Olivia Nicol is a PhD candidate in sociology at Columbia University. Financial industries,
risk and calculation, and network theory are her primary interests. At present her main
line of inquiry focuses on the mortgage crisis. She studies the valuation of assets in a
context of uncertainty and the question of responsibility in the crisis. Her previous
research focused on the selection criteria of layoffs.
Her broad educational and professional curriculum gives her a grasp of current economic
and social issues. She received three MAs in different fields: one in public administration
from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, one in business administration from the HEC
school of Management, and one in economy and management from La Sorbonne. She worked as a
consultant in organization and strategy for two years in Paris.
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is a PhD student in Communications at Columbia
University. His dissertation is an ethnographic study of "personalized
political communication". It deals with how political campaigns in the
U.S. mobilize people on a large scale to use personal contact as a
form of political communication, working through things like
canvassing and phone banking, and assisted by the appropriation of new
database technologies, internet applications, and other information
and communications technologies. His general interests lie at the
intersection between old organizations and new technologies, and in
particular the forms of participation that emerge there. He has
written about blogging, letters to the editor, and other formats of
participatory communication in several separate publications.
Maria Pilar Opazo
Pilar Opazo is a first year Ph.D. student in Sociology at Columbia University. Her research interests include
organizations as communicational systems, inequality and social stratification, especially in labor markets.
Based on Niklas Luhmann's theory, with Dr. Dario Rodriguez she co-authored the books "Communication of the
Organizations" in 2007 and "Negotiation: competing or collaborating?" in 2006. Before coming to Columbia,
Pilar coordinated the Research Center at Infocap, an NGO that provides labor training to the working poor in Chile.
Iva Petkova
Iva Petkova is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Sociology at Columbia. Her
research interests focus on learning and innovation, strategic management, social
networks and global development. Her previous work has been in analyzing the changing
practices of global firms in primary commodities to advance a more relational framework
for the analysis of the global economy. Her current focus is on managing the innovative
portions of supply relationships, value chain transformation and strategy under
uncertainty. Iva holds an MA in International Economic Relations from the University of
National and World Economy in Bulgaria and an MSc in International Business with the
School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Her work
has appeared in the Review of International Political Economy (RIPE).
Uri Shwed
   
As a last-year PhD candidate, Joost is in the midst of wrapping up his dissertation, titled "Discursive Game Play: Games as Communication." His academic work studies video games as an entryway into understanding contemporary media culture by exploring online communities, game play and digital practices (e.g. modding). He is an affiliate researcher at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, the founder of the New York chapter of the Digital Game Research Association, and teaches "Video Games: Culture & Industry" at the NYU Game Center.
Outside academic Joost is a managing director at SuperData Research, a research consultancy that specializes in consumer media and technology. He has over a decade over commercial research experience on the video game industry and new media. Joost lives in the East Village with his wife Janelle, and regularly blogs on www.waffler.org.
Zsuzsanna
Vargha |
Victor P. Corona is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Columbia
University. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 2003 and
M.A. from Columbia in 2006. He is interested in organizations as
efforts to render social behavior manageable through various
organizing principles, practices, and technologies, with his
current work focusing on the peculiar exigencies faced by military
organizations. His dissertation research applies optimal matching
sequence analysis to career structures of U.S. Army officers in the
period 1870-1985 in order to examine the management of personnel
mobility in military organizations.
Marissa
King is a first-year Ph.D. student in Sociology at Columbia University.
Her research interests include social movements, social networks,
and organizational behavior. More specifically, King is interested
in transnational interorganizational relations and institutional
reform. Her current research examines how Progressive era social
movements caused substantial shifts in the distribution of organizational
forms in the economy by promoting cooperative alternatives to
corporations. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Reed College.
Zsuzsanna
Vargha is a third year Ph.D. student in Sociology at Columbia
University. Her research interests include consumption and everyday
life, new media industries, risk and calculation, network theory,
and socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe. At present, her
main line of research explores the confluence of consumption and
collective (national) identity in advertising discourse. Vargha
presented her paper '"We're not there yet': the West according
to advertising professionals in Hungary" at the annual conference
of the Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics in July 2004,
which is based on interviews at Hungarian ad agencies, and demonstrates
how diverse concepts of the West are utilized by actors in their
positioning efforts and to the requirements of multiple contexts.
Vargha received her M.Sc. from the Budapest University of Economics
and Public Administration (or Budapest Corvinus University) with
a concentration in actuarial sciences. She
worked at a life insurance company and the Hungarian Office of
Economic Competition, and collaborates with Hungarian anthropologists
and sociologists in the research project "Consumer Cultures
in Hungary".