The Rutgers Board of Governors Announces the Promotion of Four SC&I Faculty Members
Jack Bratich, Jeffrey Lane, Katherine Ognyanova, and Khadijah White all received tenure-track promotions on April 14, 2021.
The Rutgers University-New Brunswick School of Communication and Information (SC&I) is pleased to announce the Rutgers Board of Governors has approved the promotions of four SC&I faculty members: Jack Bratich, Jeffrey Lane, Katherine Ognyanova, and Khadijah White.
These tenure-track promotions were announced on Wednesday, April 14, 2021 and will be effective July 1, 2021.
Dean Jonathan Potter said in an email to the SC&I community, “I'm really delighted to announce these promotions. Please join me in congratulating our wonderful colleagues! In a year when we have often had other things on our minds it is wonderful to get back our core business as scholars.”
Promoted to: Professor of Journalism and Media Studies
Bratich takes a critical approach to the intersection of popular culture and political culture. His work applies autonomist social theory to such topics as craft media, reality television, social movement media, and the cultural politics of secrecy. He is the author of “Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture” and co-editor of “Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality.” He is currently working on a book on necropolitics and culture called “Deathstyle Fascism.”
Promoted to: Associate Professor of Communication
Lane studies communication and technology as it relates to urban life, criminal justice, and social inequalities. He approaches these topics through ethnography in person and online. Lane is the author of The Digital Street (Oxford University Press, 2019), a neighborhood study of social media use in Harlem (NYC). His current streams of research include social media as evidence in criminal court, the role of gender in school discipline, and a visual study of perceptions of Harlem. Lane teaches courses in Urban Communication, Communication, Technology & Society, Mediated Communication, Qualitative Methods, and Ethnography.
Promoted to: Associate Professor of Communication
Ognyanova does research in the areas of network science, computational social science, social technology, media, civic, and political communication. Prior to joining Rutgers, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeastern University and Harvard University. Her past experience also includes work with the Annenberg Networks Network, the Center for the Digital Future, the USC Metamorphosis Project, as well as a fellowship with the Federal Communications Commission.
Promoted to: Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies
White researches race and gender in media and politics. Her book, “Raising the Volume: How the News Media Created the Tea Party” (Oxford, 2018) examines the rise of the Tea Party in online, print, broadcast, and cable news. In addition to her scholarly work, she consults on documentary films and has served the MacArthur Foundation as an external advisor in journalism and media. In 2007 the National Association of Black Journalists and United Nations awarded her a reporting fellowship to Senegal. She has also received the University of Pennsylvania Women of Color at Penn Award, an Emerging Diversity Scholar citation from the University of Michigan and was a White House intern on the Obama administration’s Broadcast Media team. Previously she worked as a journalist on an Emmy-nominated team at NOW on PBS (formerly NOW with Bill Moyers) and a New York City Teaching Fellow. As an activist and community organizer, White has helped lead community actions against police violence, mobilized concerned citizens via social media, organized events and programs related to racial justice, convened panels, lectures and teach-ins, and participated in rallies and other community events.
More information about the Rutgers School of Communication and Information (SC&I) is on the website.