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 UC Santa Barbara. At the intersection of motivation science, social identity and the media, Ismaharif broadly studies group processes, intergroup relations and "wise" psychological interventions. His recent research examines barriers to civil discourse that hinder national progress, leveraging communication technologies (e.g., GenAI chatbots) to understand and address these motivational barriers. His work draws on social psychological theories and adopts a multi-method approach, including experimental designs, longitudinal studies, fieldwork interventions, big-team science, public datasets and computational methods.

Ismaharif's work has been published in leading journals from diverse disciplines such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Computers in Human Behavior, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Political Psychology, and Human Communication Research. His scholarship has been recognized internationally, including the Top Paper Award from the Intergroup Communication Division (2025) and Mass Communication Division (2020) of the International Communication Association, and the Gene Burd Top Three Paper Award from the Communication Technology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (2018). His research activities have been supported by various external (e.g., MOE-START Scheme and DSO National Laboratories) and internal funding sources (e.g., UCSB Regents Fellowship).

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 conducting research in Organizational Communication. Her research spans the dynamics of high reliability organizations (HROs), with a special emphasis on how these entities articulate values and manage complex interactions within various contexts, especially law enforcement.

Sofia's work probes themes such as identity, culture, leadership, teamwork and recruitment and retention challenges inherent in today’s workforce. Her studies delve into both HROs and broader organizational frameworks, with a particular focus on intergenerational dynamics in the workplace. Her research reflects her commitment to both practical and theoretical explorations of how organizational effectiveness can be optimized across diverse settings.

With a commitment to interdisciplinary learning and a dedication to organizational dynamics, Sofia integrates her personal interests with her professional pursuits. She is driven to enhance organizational practices through a blend of rigorous scholarship and practical application.

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.

Qiyao Peng is a Ph.D. student in Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on persuasion, health communication, and computational social science, with an emphasis on how message design and digital media environments influence (health) behaviors and health-related decision-making. Drawing on communication theories, she examines how emotional appeals, multimodal message features, and online social interactions shape audience perceptions, psychological reactance, and behavioral intentions.

Her methodological expertise spans experimental design, large-scale social media analysis, natural language processing, and computer vision. She has applied these approaches to study topics including anti-vaping public service announcements, cancer prevention messaging, etc.

Qiyao's work integrates theoretical rigor with practical implications, aiming to inform the development of more effective health messages and campaigns. 

Yidi Zhang is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie at the intersection of computer-mediated communication and interpersonal communication. Specifically, she is interested in the social influence of communication technologies and how mediated communication changes people's interpersonal interactions. Her research work falls under the following agenda: 1) The reciprocal effects of self-presentation and self-identification online; 2) Self-effects of communicating in mediated contexts; 3) The utility of AI as an intervention agent in online discussions. Her works cover topics including vicarious interpersonal interaction, online partial self-presentation and impression management, and online hate. 

Yifei Wang is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests center around social identity, information behavior, and economic inequality. Using surveys, experiments, and computational methods, he examines the display of social identities in the digital space and its influence in information behaviors and sociopolitical attitudes. He is especially interested in the ways socioeconomic status and class identity are shaped and perceived in communication. His research has appeared in outlets such as Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Computational Communication Research, and Social Science Computer Review.