Hannah O’Connell is an M.A./Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at UCSB, where she also completed her B.A. in Communication Studies and B.S. in Psychological & Brain Sciences. Her research intersects family, interpersonal, and health communication, exploring resilience through an intergenerational lens. She examines how communication patterns and relational dynamics across generations persist, adapt, break down, and influence well-being during times of stress.

Katherine Carmichael is an MA/PhD student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Carmichael's work seeks to answer 2 key question: 1) How can Communication scholarship be leveraged to reduce barriers to enacting climate action at governmental, societal, and organizational levels? 2) How can academia, Government, and society effectively collaborate to achieve shared goals? Carmichael's research interests stem from her time working as a climate staffer in state government, and are heavily intertwined with her active involvement in the Santa Barbara south coast community.

Emerson is an MA-PhD student researching the social contexts and consequences of political humor. Their ongoing projects approach the topic of humor in the forms of signs at protest demonstrations, alt-right memes, trans humor, and late night talk shows. They combine quantitative and qualitative methods, including experiments, computational work, and community engaged research methods. Their approach to research is influenced by their academic background in sociology and political science, and employment background in public policy and social services nonprofit work.

Samantha Ulloa earned her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Statistics from California State University, Monterey Bay. A former McNair Scholar and Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholar, she is a first-generation Latine M.A./Ph.D. student whose research examines how family dynamics shape partner selection and how these early influences inform communication patterns within romantic relationships. Her work intersects familial, cultural, and interpersonal communication, with a focus on supporting romantic partners in navigating conflict, expressing needs, and fostering effective communication.

Jinyeong Kim is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research explores how digital and social media shape health communication-from public norms circulating on platforms to individual processes of self-perception and decision making.

She is particularly interested in the interplay between posters (i.e., senders) and viewers (i.e., receivers) on social media, investigating how their interactions influence perceptions of self and others as well as subsequent health behaviors. Her long-standing interest in eating disorders and body image informs this research, with particular attention to the dual role of social media in both perpetuating harmful descriptive norms and fostering recovery narratives that promote self-acceptance and healthier behaviors.

Methodologically, she mainly employs surveys, secondary data analysis, and computational approaches to capture the complexity of digital health contexts. 

Beyond academia, she founded "Mein Mine," a size-inclusive balletwear brand in South Korea, reflecting her commitment to expanding the scope of body representations and promoting inclusivity by challenging stereotypes.

Her ultimate goal is to guide evidence-based interventions which can enhance empowerment, inclusivity, and equitable understandings of health in contemporary digital environments.

Youjin Kim is interested in exploring how online conflicts, self-expression, silence, and particularly hate speech are shaped by the interplay between technological affordances, the characteristics of digital spaces, and psychological as well as sociological factors. Her research also examines AI-mediated communication, with a focus on both the potential and the challenges of using AI to regulate online hate. In addition, she studies how individuals use media and technology to construct their identities and how these processes influence participation and solidarity in offline contexts.

She received her B.A. in Social Psychology and Visual & Multimedia Design from Sookmyung Women's University. Before graduate study, she worked for over three years in the IT industry as a UX/UI designer, developing online platforms across various domains. She then earned her M.A. in Communication from Seoul National University and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Communication at UC Santa Barbara.