Anabel is a 2023 UCSB alumni who graduated with B.A.s in Feminist Studies and Linguistics while also completing the Poverty, Inequality, and Social Justice minor. Anabel was a co-founder and co-president for the First-Generation Tri-Alpha Honor Society where she worked to build a community for students to connect with other first-generation peers and staff to connect them with on campus resources and support. Anabel was also a part of the Promise Scholars Program where she served as the Mentorship Program Coordinator, in 2022, where she helped to welcome incoming freshmen to campus. Anabel is grateful for the opportunity to work with amazing students and staff at UCSB. 

One of two undergraduate advisors, Anabel provides individual academic advising to 1800+ pre- and full- majors in Communication. She advises students and faculty on all aspects of undergraduate affairs (i.e. major requirements, academic planning, course requirements, academic problems, transfer coursework, independent studies, internship opportunities and graduation, etc.). She processes student petitions as needed, interfaces with
other advising offices, and works as a leading team member with student peer advisors. She communicate colleges policies to students and provides input to the Student Affairs Manager, Department Chair, and the Undergraduate Affairs Committee regarding a wide variety of issues affecting students.

Renee Houston ( Ph.D., The Florida State University) is an engaged communication teacher/scholar focused on developing stigma-based approaches to understanding social identity inequities that inform psychological and communication theory as well as organizational policy and practice. She’s also interested in identifying and implementing organizational practices that support employee empowerment, collaboration, and healthy work lives. Because her work engages the community, she’s committed to social learning practices that decenter expertise and create space for open, respectful, and collaborative solutions. As a lifelong advocate of whole-person approaches, Renee’s courses focus on exploring emotion, work-life and well-being, alternative organizing, and social identities in organizational contexts. Using a social learning approach to teaching she seeks to bring voice, connection, and justice to her students that inspires them to seek their life's purpose with skills, confidence, and joy. She is also an experienced higher education administrator with an extensive background in mentoring, program development, and education technology. Most recently, she developed several programs designed to provide key experiences that help college students move toward career choices. Her work was recognized with an award from the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Erick is an M.A./Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his M.A. in Psychological Research from California State University, Long Beach in 2023 and his B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Irvine in 2020.

Previously, his work has focused on digital emotional contagion and source attribution, focusing on human and algorithm interactions with digital media on social media platforms.

His current research interest lie in the interdisciplinary intersection of psychology and communication. Specifically, he is interested in exploring the social processes (i.e., emotion, contagion, influence, approval, culture, and community) that drive human interactions on social media and digital platforms.

Ismaharif is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received both his B.Soc.Sci. and M.Soc.Sci (Social and Organizational Psychology concentration) degrees in Psychology from the National University of Singapore. At the intersection of motivation science, social identity and communication technologies, Ismaharif broadly studies group processes, intergroup relations and inequality. His work draws on social psychological theories and adopts a multi-method approach, using a combination of experimental designs, longitudinal studies, behavioral intervention programs, big-team science, and analyses of public datasets using structural equation modeling. His recent research explores how media environments and social psychological processes shape national resilience and social cohesion. Using quantitative methods, he leverages on social technologies to foster collective commitment and striving in citizens (e.g., civic participation, collective action). Ismaharif’s work has appeared in outlets from a variety of disciplines such as Computers in Human Behavior,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and European Journal of Personality.

Margot Plunkett is a M.A./Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received Communication and English (Literature) degrees from Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. Margot examines toxic workplaces to unearth the rationale behind bullying, aiming to facilitate new ways individuals can combat unhealthy behaviors. Margot's research interests centralize the anticipatory socialization and assimilation process, emotions in the workplace, humanistic management, and workplace bullying. Qualitative research is her preferred method for its ability to draw out in-depth, first-hand accounts of participants' experiences. Margot is a research affiliate for the International Humanistic Management Affiliation. Her work has appeared in the Humanistic Management Journal. Ultimately, Margot's scholarly pursuits seek to engender healthier organizational cultures and encourage dialogue that is honest, antitoxic, and geared towards rejecting incivility in organizations.

Sofia Cavaness is a graduate student currently working towards getting her M.A. in the field of organizational communication with an emphasis on cultural studies.

Sofia's interest lies in exploring the organizational dynamics of high reliability organizations (HROs) within natural resource agencies. Her research looks at the articulation of organizational values and how such values shape public engagements. She is interested in studying the ways that these organizations deal with identity, right and wrong and how personnel get cultural interlopers to interact with the environment. 

Sofia is also interested in examining non-traditional organizational frameworks to better understand and interpret the mechanisms through which these unique organizations operate. 

With a profound love for the outdoors and a deep commitment to understanding organizational dynamics, Sofia Cavaness seeks to bridge her personal passions with her academic pursuits. 

Prateekshit (pruh-TEEK-shit), who goes by Kanu (kuh-noo), is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication at UCSB, and specializes in political communication. His active research program uses computational methods (e.g. network analysis), survey experiments, and neuroimaging techniques to investigate the effects of political entertainment, especially humor and satire, on democratic participation, news sharing, and individual political agency, with comparative focus between the United States and South Asian contexts. On various aspects of this program, he has led and collaborated on several online experimental surveys and neuropsychological studies with fluency in advanced computational analyses (R, Python), as well as peer-reviewed publications in broad interest journals including Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, and field-specific journals such as Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, and Health Psychology. Before joining UCSB, Kanu completed his Ph.D. in the Summer of 2022 at the Annenberg School for Communication at UPenn, where he was also a postdoctoral fellow, appointed jointly between the Communication Neuroscience Lab and the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication. Complementing his academic work on humor, Kanu is also a professional improvisational comedian. Between 2019 and 2023, he was part of ensembles at Comedy Sportz Philadelphia, where he performed and taught improvisational comedy.