Susan McFarlane-Alvarez (she/her/hers)
Director, Professor of Advertising and Public Relations
Susan McFarlane-Alvarez, Ph.D. (Georgia State University, 2006) is a Professor of Advertising at Michigan State University's Department of Advertising and Public Relations. Her research focuses at the intersection of identity (race and ethnicity), images, and corporate expression, with works focused on postcoloniality and nationality, and histories of branding during periods of racial reckoning and social activism. McFarlane-Alvarez also explores pedagogical strategies that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, both in academia, and in professional advertising and PR practice. With academic experience that spans three decades, Suzy has taught and researched at the University of the West Indies, Georgia State University, and Clayton State University. Her undergraduate degree is from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego.
Fashina Aladé
Assistant Professor of Advertising & Public Relations
Fashina (Shina) Aladé is an Assistant Professor of Advertising & Public Relations, and also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Her work lies at the intersection of media effects, developmental psychology, and early childhood education, with a focus on young children’s comprehension of and learning from educational media. Her research has won top paper awards from the International Communication Association, and has been published in journals such as Media Psychology and the Journal of Communication.
Danielle K. Brown
Associate Professor, School of Journalism
Danielle K. Brown is a researcher of journalism, politics, and sociology — specializing in media representations and narrative change; reconciliation and reparative solutions; social movements and activism; and identity and political psychology. Brown has published dozens of articles in top-tier journals in mass communication, sociology, and political science, and her work also appears in popular media outlets like the Washington Post, Nieman Lab, Columbia Journalism Review and The Conversation. Brown is an associate editor for the International Journal of Press/Politics and serves on the editorial board for Journalism Practice. She brings additional skills in industry and community engaged research, public scholarship, and visual communication to the J-School.
Celeste Campos-Castillo
Associate Professor, Media and Information
Celeste Campos-Castillo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media & Information. Celeste discovers ways technologies can be designed and implemented so that they mitigate inequalities, particularly with respect to health outcomes and access to health care. This interdisciplinary and multimethod research involves documenting where inequalities exist and why, engaging members of minoritized communities to identify their needs, and conducting social psychological research to understand the underlying mechanisms that connect individuals, contexts, and outcomes. Examples of this research include tracking demographic patterns of social media use for health communication, identifying the policy contexts that enable telehealth and patient portals to address health inequities, evaluating how graphic arts design can support the wellbeing of neurodiverse youth, and designing an anti-racist chatbot that identifies when cyberbullying occurs among racially and ethnically diverse adolescents and deploys support.
Chuqing Dong
Assistant Professor of Advertising and Public Relations
Chuqing Dong is an Assistant Professor of Advertising + Public Relations. Her research focuses on public relations, corporate social responsibility, strategic communication in the nonprofit/government sectors, and digital media. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories and using multimethod approaches, her research agenda is shaped by inquiries such as 1) the effects and effectiveness of CSR communications in the new media environment and within a global context; 2) strategic CSR alliances between NPOs and corporations and their impacts on the allies, publics, and the society; and 3) relationship management strategies for nonprofits and government agencies.
Elizabeth Dorrance Hall
Associate Professor, Communication
Elizabeth Dorrance Hall is an Associate Professor in the Communication Department at Michigan State University and Director of the Family Communication and Relationships Lab. She received her Ph.D. in Family and Interpersonal Communication from Purdue University. Elizabeth's research focuses on communication processes in close relationships, especially in the context of family.
Jacob Fisher
Assistant Professor, Communication
Dr. Jacob T. Fisher (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. His research is positioned at the intersection of digital technology, attention, and decision making. His current work in this area uses functional neuroimaging, behavioral and "big data" measures, and computational modeling to explore how effort requirements, perceptual complexity, and motivational factors in digital contexts influence attention and goal pursuit.
Thea Knowles
Assistant Professor, Communicative Science and Disorders
Dr. Thea Knowles is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at Michigan State University and directs the Clinical Applications of Speech Acoustics Lab. She is a certified speech-language pathologist with an expertise in motor speech disorders and particularly speech disorders secondary to Parkinson’s disease. She received her Bachelor of Arts from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and received her Master of Clinical Science in Speech-Language Pathology as well as her PhD in Health & Rehabilitation Sciences from Western University (London, Canada).
Christina Myers
Assistant Professor of Journalism
Dr. Christina L. Myers hails from Columbia, South Carolina where she is a three-time graduate of the University of South Carolina, earning a B.S. in Biological Sciences, Master in Mass Communication and Doctor of Philosophy in Mass Communications. Dr. Myers joins Michigan State University as a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Journalism Department, and will be teaching JRN 200, Fall 2022.
Edward Timke (He/Him/His)
Assistant Professor of Advertising and Public Relations
Edward (Ed) Timke is a disabled scholar and activist focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in advertising. Before coming to Michigan State University, Dr. Timke held positions at the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute, Duke University (Cultural Anthropology and Innovation & Entrepreneurship), American University (School of International Service), and the University of California, Berkeley (Media Studies). Since 2016, he has been the Associate Editor of Advertising & Society Quarterly, an academic journal focused on advertising’s relationship to society, culture, history, and the economy. He has published various research and educational articles on DEIB in advertising, including disability, gender, race, and sexuality.