Dr. Celeste González de Bustamante is the founding Director of the Center for Global Change and Media in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where she holds the Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair in Communication. Prior to directing the CGCM, she served as the Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Moody College. She is a full professor in the School of Journalism and Media at UT Austin. Dr. González de Bustamante also serves as chair of the Mexico Center in the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts. She is an unwavering advocate for students, staff, and faculty and endeavors to create positive social change through academia, media, and communication.

Her research focuses on historical and contemporary issues related to media in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Mexico, Costa Rica, and other parts of Latin America. She also is advancing research about Filipina/o/x American communities and media in the twentieth century. Her book Surviving Mexico: Resistance and Resilience Among Journalists in the Twenty-first Century (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2021) (with Dr. Jeannine E. Relly) received three national awards, the James W. Tankard Book Award, the Knudson Latin America Prize, and the Frank Luther Mott – KTA Journalism & Mass Communication Research Award.

Dr. Shiv Ganesh is the Associate Director of the Center for Global Change and Media in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where he serves as a Professor of Communication. He holds a PhD from Purdue University. His research explores communication and collective organizing within globalization and digital technologies, focusing on activism, conflict, sustainability, and transparency. His work combines critical-institutional and poststructural approaches, using ethnographic and qualitative methods, with fieldwork conducted in countries like India, New Zealand, the U.S., and Sweden.

Dr. Ganesh’s recent projects include studies on environmental reporting dynamics in the United Nations Global Compact Network and sustainability in global cotton supply chains, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra). He also led research on advocacy among indigenous communities in India and global digital activism networks, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Foundation.

His work is widely published in top journals, including Communication Monographs and New Media & Society. Former editor-in-chief of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, he also serves on several editorial boards and has received research awards from the International and National Communication Associations. Elected as an ICA Fellow in 2021, Dr. Ganesh joined UT Austin in 2019 from Massey University in New Zealand, where he was a Professor of Communication and Head of the School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing. From 2019 to 2023, he served as the Moody College’s Chair of Global Engagement and was Chair of Membership and Internationalization at the International Communication Association. In 2024, he was designated a Distinguished Fellow of the National Communication Association.

ailish elzy is a Ph.D. Student in Media Studies at UT Austin. She completed her MFA in Writing and Producing for Television at Loyola Marymount University and her MA in Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University. Her script “Hyphenated” won best graduate pilot or teleplay at Loyola Marymount’s Film Outside the Frame Festival. Her master’s thesis titled "Who Will Survive in America," explored the intersection between the gothic melodrama genre and the survival of Black folks in America through the lens of the 2017 film Get Out. In her doctoral work, she plans to explore the progression and focus of the biracial identity in American cinema. Her research interests include Black American cinema, Black feminism, queer theory, genre theory, and production design.

Kellen Sharp earned his master’s in Media Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include toxic techno cultures and digital discourses surrounding race and health. He is currently working on a project examining the remediation warning labels for e-cigarette products across social media.

Ya'Ke Smith is a Professor of Film in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He earned his B.A. from the Communication Arts Department at the University of the Incarnate Word, where he later became the youngest recipient of the Alumni of Distinction for Professional Achievement award. He completed his M.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin’s film program. Variety magazine has named him one of the best film educators “from across the globe.”

His films have received worldwide acclaim, screening and winning awards at over 110 film festivals. The Director’s Guild of America, the Student Academy Awards, HBO, Showtime, the City of Buffalo, NY—which proclaimed February 23, 2013, as Ya’Ke Smith Day—and the City of Cincinnati, OH—which proclaimed October 6, 2019, as Ya'Ke Smith Day—have honored him.

He has been featured on NPR, CNN, HLN, Ebony Online, Indiewire, Filmmaker Magazine, and Shadow&Act.

Dr. Stacey Sowards is a Professor of Communication who teaches rhetorical theory, environmental communication, gender and communication, and intercultural communication. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 2001. Dr. Sowards' research centers on environmental, intercultural, and gender communication across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the U.S., often in collaboration with the nonprofit Rare, involving fieldwork in Mexico, Colombia, Palau, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Mozambique. She is fluent in Spanish and Indonesian, with dissertation research in Indonesia funded by a Fulbright grant, and she received a Fulbright-Hays grant in 2005 for further study there.

Her work appears in leading journals, such as Argumentation and Advocacy, Communication Studies, Philosophy and Rhetoric, and Communication Theory. Her 2019 book on Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers was published by the University of Texas Press.

PJ Raval is an Associate Professor of Film at the University of Texas at Austin and a queer, first-generation Filipinx American filmmaker whose work examines social justice issues through the voices of queer and marginalized subjects. Named one of Out Magazine's 'OUT 100,' PJ's body of work has been featured on PBS, Netflix, Hulu, Discovery, and Showtime. His documentary CALL HER GANDA explores the tragic murder of transpinay Jennifer Laude by a U.S. Marine. Airing on PBS (POV) in 2019, CALL HER GANDA received a nomination for Best Documentary from the Philippines Academy Awards and led an extensive impact campaign, including over 150 community screenings and a closed-door meeting with the U.S. State Department. His recent film, WHO WE BECOME, is a coming-of-age documentary that follows three Filipino American women in Texas during the COVID pandemic. Distributed by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing, the film is currently streaming on Netflix.

PJ is also a co-founder of the NEA-supported queer arts organization OUTsider and serves on the steering committee of the Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc). He has received several prestigious honors, including a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2021 Soros Justice Fellowship, and a 2024 USA Artist Fellowship. Additionally, he is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Renita Coleman is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. She has 15 years of experience as a newspaper journalist and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. Her latest book, Designing Experiments for the Social Sciences: How to Plan, Create and Execute Research Using Experiments, is published by SAGE. She is an associate editor of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Her research explores agenda-setting, race, visual communication, and ethics. She has investigated the effects of photographs on ethical reasoning, the framing and attribution of responsibility in health news, and the moral development of journalists and public relations practitioners, among other topics. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in academic journals, including Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Visual Communication Quarterly, Newspaper Research Journal, Journalism, and Journalism Studies. In addition to her new book, she co-authored The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics in 2005 with Lee Wilkins of the University of Missouri.

Before her academic career, Coleman worked as a journalist at newspapers and magazines for 15 years, serving as a reporter, editor, and designer at the Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer, the Sarasota, FL Herald-Tribune, the Orlando, FL Sentinel, and other news organizations. Coleman teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in experimental design, lifestyle journalism, and ethics.

Laura G. Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor of Latinx and Mexican Performance and Visual Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also serves as Associate Dean for Community Engagement and Public Practice in the College of Fine Arts. She holds affiliate positions in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, Theatre and Dance, the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Gutiérrez teaches Latinx and Mexican cultural production, feminist and queer aesthetics, and critical theory. Her forthcoming book, Binding Intimacies in Contemporary Queer Latinx Performance and Visual Art, is supported by the Getty Research Institute and UT’s Provost Author’s Fellows program. She authored Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage, which won an MLA book award. Additionally, Gutiérrez serves as Artistic Director of OUTsider in Austin, programming its annual festival.

Dr. Adela Pineda Franco is the Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she was Professor of Latin American Literature and Film at Boston University, where she founded the Center of Latin American Studies. Her research examines literature and film within transnational and interdisciplinary frameworks, focusing on culture, politics, and intellectual thought. Her works include a study of John Steinbeck’s writings from a Mexican perspective and her acclaimed book, The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage: Intellectuals and Film in the Twentieth Century (2019).

Joe Straubhaar is Professor Emeritus in the School of Journalism and Media and was the Amon G. Carter Sr., Centennial Professor of Communication in the Radio-Television-Film Department at the University of Texas at Austin. His current research concerns the globalization of television and social media, national and regional television in Brazil and Latin America, disinformation in Brazil, and digital inclusion in both the U.S. and Latin America. He is the lead author of From Telenovelas to Netflix: Transnational, Transverse Television in Latin America (Palgrave, 2021), co-author with John Sinclair of Latin American Television Industries (2013), lead author of Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender and the Digital Divide in Austin, Texas (2013), sole author of World Television: From Global to Local (2007). He has co-edited five other books and numerous journal articles on these topics. He is currently working as lead author on a forthcoming book, Transnational Streaming Television: Transforming the Relations of Global Companies, Nations, Language and Culture.

Silvia DalBen Furtado is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, where she investigates the use of artificial intelligence in Latin American journalism. Her current research focuses on computational journalism, AI ethics, global media, streaming television, platform studies, and computational methods. She holds an MA in communication from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Her thesis on socio-technical networks and uncertainties in news written by "robots" won the Adelmo Genro Filho Award, granted by SBPJor - the Brazilian Association of Researchers in Journalism. In Brazil, Silvia worked as a multimedia reporter and as an executive producer of videos, films, games, and apps.

Sheila B. Lalwani is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the Moody College of Communication. A recipient of the prestigious Graduate School Mentoring Fellowship and Continuing Fellowship, Sheila conducts research on comparative media law, freedom of expression, and cybersecurity within the U.S. and the European Union. She is also a research associate with the Technology and Information Policy Institute and has contributed research on smart cities, AI policy, and surveillance practices. Sheila has presented her research at numerous conferences, including the Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference at Yale Law School, the International Communication Association (ICA), and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). She has been awarded grants from Moody College, TIPI, and Good Systems. Funding from TIPI also enabled her to serve as a two-time panelist for the Oxford Programme on Comparative Media Law and Policy at Oxford University. Her work has appeared in Communication Law Review, Surveillance & Society, and the Journal of Information Policy. A former Fulbright Scholar to Germany, Sheila graduated with a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and started her career at the Associated Press.

Gustavo Fuchs is a Ph.D. student with a diverse academic background, holding an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Nottingham and an M.Sc. in Media Studies from FLACSO. His research focuses on the intersection of media, politics, and society, particularly within the context of Central America. Gustavo's interests include media ownership, the influence of evangelical movements, religious politics, and the far right on media narratives. His work critically examines issues such as agenda-setting, framing, and the broader implications of media regulation on democracy and human rights. Passionate about teaching and research, Gustavo contributes to the fields of political communication, freedom of expression, and the role of religious media in shaping public discourse.

Carlo Javier Byrd is a Ph.D. student in Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in online health misinformation with a focus on food and nutrition misinformation across social media. His research explores the roles of key stakeholders—including social media influencers, health experts-turned-fact-checkers, journalists covering food systems, and users navigating quality information—examining how online media consumption influences offline decisions about food. A skilled qualitative researcher, Carlo has contributed to multiple content analysis projects, including coding over 3,000 images for studies like Taylor Sheridan’s thesis on photojournalistic coverage of school shootings. Originally from Laredo, Texas, Carlo also delves into topics related to Texas-Mexico border media, social semiotics, and online credibility, aiming to connect insights from health misinformation with public health solutions.

Nupur is a Master’s student in Information Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction. With over two years of experience as a UI/UX Designer, she has a strong background in product design and user experience. Her work focuses on creating meaningful, user-centered digital experiences by blending creativity, data-driven insights, and empathy. Nupur’s skillset includes both research and design, bridging the gap between abstract concepts and real-world applications to ensure her designs are innovative and practical. Outside of her professional pursuits, Nupur enjoys exploring new places, watching movies, connecting with pets, and immersing herself in music, all of which add a unique vibrancy to her creative process.