Editorial Team

Runchao Liu joined the editorial team in 2020 as a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and has continued to serve TMQ since graduating in 2021. Liu specializes in studying Asian/Asian American media, sound, and subcultures. You may find her/their academic writings in Cinéma & Cie: International Film Studies Journal, M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, Critical Asian Studies, and the forthcoming collections Critical Race Media Literacy (Routledge) and The Cultural Politics of Femvertising (Palgrave Macmillan). 

Joshua N. Morrison is a PhD student in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he has taught courses in public speaking and media literacy. His research takes a critical approach to the cultural production, distribution, consumption, and valuation of celebrity in contemporary culture. His work has been published in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.

Bree Trisler is a PhD canddiate specializing in Critical Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of MInnesota, Twin Cities. Bree has been with TMQ since 2017. She has taught public speaking, media literacy, and organizational communication and has experience as a teaching assistant in a wide variety of media classes including Communicating War, Communicating Terrorism, Introduction to Media Studies, and Media Outlaws. Bree's dissertation research focuses on the gendered and racialized framing of US gun politics, especially white women's (neoliberal) activism.

Heidi Zimmerman joined the Teaching Media Quarterly editorial board in 2013 as a Ph.D. student in the University of Minnesota's Department of Communication Studies, and has continued to serve since graduating in 2015. She is a feminist media studies scholar, specializing in ethical, environmental, and food related media. Both her teaching and scholarship are motivated by the question of how media are caught up in matters of citizenship and governance in contemporary culture. She is particularly interested in the way in which media, in this capacity, are structured by larger power relations that are, among other things, racialized, gendered and classed.

Past Editors

Elja Roy is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. She finished her master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Calcutta, India. Her research brings production-based case studies to explores the intersection of environmental communication and ecocinema. Roy has conducted field research in the Pacific North-West, Minnesota, India, and Bangladesh. Her doctoral dissertation, “Art, Activism and Sundarbans: A case study of Ecomusical Environmental Movement through Film” is half-written and half a documentary film, “Musical Mangrove.” It examines an artistic environmental movement involving multicultural ethnic groups and minorities in the Global South through community-based co-productions. Roy also teaches Video Production at the University of Minnesota and Critical Media Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College, MN. Elja will be joining the University of Memphis as an Assistant Professor of Film, in Fall 2021.

Caroline Bayne is a graduate student in the department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include feminist media studies, subcultural studies, gendered labor, affect, and feminist forms of self-publishing. Her current research focuses on bathroom graffiti in clubs and music venues around Minneapolis, the ways women use these precariously public and private spaces to collectively generate knowledge about their community, and its situation in the lineage feminist forms of self-publishing.

Megan Yahnke is pursuing her Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. She received her MA in Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she developed a passion for teaching. She values intersectional feminist approaches to media. Currently, she studies media representations of female sexuality and reproduction. She also examines media’s relationship to feminist activism.

Joy Hamilton is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Studies. Interests include environmental humanities, political economy, tourism, and service-learning pedagogy. Her PhD research is focused on tourism in Colorado and how it intersects with race, class, gender, and place. Joy teaches undergraduate course Media Literacy, Interviewing and Communication and Public Speaking. Follow Joy on Twitter @Joy_Hamilton

Kristin Fitzsimmons is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies with a focus in audiences and fans. Her current work is a history of women's involvement in tabletop roleplaying games. 

Rebecca A. Jurisz has a PhD from the University of Minnesota where she teaches video production. Her research looks at the ways in which femininity and citizenship are constituted through television. Follow Rebecca on Twitter @rebeccajurisz

Elena D. Hristova, Lecturer in Media, and Head of MA Media & Digital Communications at Regent's University London. Follow Elena on Twitter: @Elena_D_H 

Mia Fischer was a TMQ founding member and was an editorial board member from 2012-2014. Mia Fischer is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research and teaching interests are at the intersections of critical media, sports, queer, and surveillance studies. Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Sexualities, and the Journal of Sport and Social Issues among other places. Follow Mia on Twitter: @MiaFischer

Kate Ranachan was an editor of Teaching Media Quarterly from 2012-2013. Her research examines the intersection of sport, media, and globalization. She is currently a lecturer in the Communication Studies department at the University of Minnesota. Follow Kate on Twitter: @kate_ranachan

Lauren M. Weinzimmer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. She earned her M.A. in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2014) and her dual B.A. in Communication and English Literature at the University of Southern California (2010). Her dissertation explores YouTube beauty vlogging as an industry and locates the practice within discourses of new media production, digital labor, and female entrepreneurialism. Follow Lauren on Twitter @lweinz

Jacquelyn Arcy, Assistant Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier University

Jules Wight, Graduate Instructor in Communication Studies, University of Minnesota

Heather Hayes, Chair of Rhetoric Studies, Whitman College

Melody Hoffmann, Instructor of Communication, Anoka-Ramsey Community College