Faculty Affiliates

I am a Visiting Assistant Professor at the department of Radio-Television-Film, Moody College of Communication - The University of Texas at Austin. I am teaching History of Video Games, Video Game Industry, and Video Game Culture + Criticism. I have a PhD in Science and Technology Policy at Unicamp and my dissertation's title is: "It is €0,10 a word! The role of localization in the videogame industry". I also have a Master's in Cultural History, a B.A. in History and a teaching degree in History (all from Unicamp). I was a visiting scholar in several universities: Stanford (fall 2013), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2018-2019), Robert Morris University (Spring 2022), and Freie Universität’s Osteuropa Institut (November 2022). My goal at CEMI is to foster game industry studies and develop new partnerships with scholars and labs around the world.

Richard Lewis has worked as a writer, producer, director, and/or editor for companies including National Geographic Television, Channel 4 (UK), A&E, PBS, Endgame Entertainment, Broken Road Productions, Sierra Club Productions, and Devillier-Donegan Enterprises. Richard’s screenplay, Bleeding Hearts, won the award for Best Pilot Script at the 2022 Conference of the University Film and Video Association. His feature script, Valley of Bones, was commissioned and produced by North Dakota-based Zephyr Productions on a $2.2 million budget. The film opened on 300+ screens in September 2017. A feature script, Acceleration, is presently under a third option to Endgame Entertainment, and another, Shrank, was recently under option to LA-based Shrink Wrap Productions. Richard also wrote the treatment for and worked as a creative consultant on The Living Weapon, an episode of American Experience for PBS which won an Emmy for research. Chimp Rescue, one of his documentaries for National Geographic Television, won a Genesis Award as the year’s Best US Cable Documentary. Richard’s editing credits include Nick Broomfield's Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, which premiered at Sundance. Additional experience includes two years as a story analyst in Los Angeles and three years as a management consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in Atlanta and London. He is originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Ben Bays grew up in Texas, studied illustration, worked as an animator, then video game artist, now educator.  He joined the faculty of the Department of Radio Television Film in 2008 and is involved in education at the departmental, college, institutional, regional and international level.   His current area of research is cultural spaces around comics and cartoons, but his areas of instruction are in the digital arts and entertainment.

Korey Pereira earned a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin. Since graduating, he has remained involved with the department by mixing end-of-semester student films and in 2018 joined the faculty as a Lecturer. In 2023 he accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Practice and Audio Area Head. He has also guest lectured at Texas State University, East Tennessee State University, Syracuse University, and a number of courses at the University of Texas.

Korey is the founder of Soularity Sound, a post-production sound company based
in Austin, Texas. He also works with Soundcrafter and a number of other Austin and LA-
based crews as a Dialogue Editor, Foley Mixer or Supervising Sound Editor. In 2020, he
upgraded his studio to support Dolby Atmos mixing and has expanded into 360 spatial
audio for VR and Atmos mixing for video games. He started the now recurring Tech
Corner column for Wavelength (the MPSE quarterly magazine) and regularly
contributes to ProSoundEffects.com and Production Expert.

Korey is an active member of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences and in
2021 he was elected to the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Board of Directors. In 2022,
Korey was awarded a Primetime Emmy for his sound editing work on Stranger Things
Season 4. In 2023, Korey was nominated for a Golden Reel for his work on Stranger
Things and won for his work on Prey, and was also nominated again for his work on
Stranger Things. Other credits include films from both Richard Linklater and Robert
Rodriguez, as well as television series such as Shipping Wars, Law & Order, My 600-lb
Life, and Fixer Upper: Welcome Home. A full list of credits can be found on IMDB.
When not working, Korey enjoys traveling the world with his wife and recording new
sounds along the way.

A television producer and screenwriter, Maya Perez was most recently a co-producer on a romantic drama series starring Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridloff and produced by Ava DuVernay for Starz. Prior to that, she was an executive story editor on Showtime’s American Rust S2 and an executive producer on the unscripted interview series Austin Film Festival’s On Story on PBS for eleven seasons. Nominated for two Lone Star EMMY Awards®, On Story won a Lone Star EMMY Award® for Best Interview/Discussion Program Series in 2018 and for Best Arts/Entertainment Program in 2014. Maya’s feature screenplays have been optioned for production and recognized by fellowships from SFFILM/Westridge, Sundance Institute, and NY Stage & Film.

Maya's short stories and essays have been published in Texas Monthly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, Electric Lit, and more. In addition, she co-edited three collections of interviews with filmmakers published by the University of Texas Press: On Story — Screenwriters and Their Craft (2013), On Story — Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films (2016), and On Story — The Golden Ages of Television (October 2018).

Maya received her BA from Vassar College and her MFA in Screenwriting as a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. She grew up in Kenya, Zambia, and the United States and now lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches screenwriting and is the Area Head for Screenwriting at The University of Texas at Austin.

Micah Barber is a kids & family director from Austin. He has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as a Director (Student Academy Award Finalist) and Screenwriter (Nicholl Fellowship Semifinalist). The imagination and sense of joy and wonder displayed in his short films first attracted the attention of Terrence Malick's wife, Alexandra, who asked to produce The Adventures of Thomas & Felix, his first feature film. It has been called “A stellar (and rare) indie family film”, winning several screenplay prizes and a “Best Family Film” distinction during its run at festivals across the country.   Micah is developing several projects for kids and imaginative adults. His style is joyful and complex, often featuring vulnerable coming-of-age heroes, and with a nod to Hayao Miyazaki, Jim Henson, and 1980s classics. Before making his own features, Micah (a former musician himself ) assisted producer Fred Miller in the development and production of the family movie Angels Sing, starring Harry Connick Jr., Willie Nelson, Connie Britton, Kris Kristofferson, and a host of Austin music legends. Micah’s newest projects with co-writer Tony Faia include the pirate adventure Winter Island, under option by 8750 Films in Los Angeles, and Good Hart, a television pilot. Micah is attached to direct both. He teaches film at the University of Texas at Austin, including an innovative course with executive Jordan Levin.

Erin Reilly is a creator, educator and strategist with 20 years of experience inventing new approaches, products, services, and experiences about storytelling, engagement, and learning through immersive technology. Erin is Past Board President of NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy Education), and is ex-officio of the Executive Committee of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group, as well as serves on advisory boards, such as SXSW Pitch Competition, Disney Junior Education and PBS children's programming, Hero Elementary and Emmy-award winning Sci Girls.

As an educator, Erin currently is Professor of Practice and Founding Director of Texas Immersive Institute, the interactive and immersive media hub at the University of Texas at Austin focused on research, projects, and learning the future of interactive and immersive media. In her role, she guides faculty and students in imagining where innovation meets entrepreneurship and builds university-wide initiatives, fostering relationships with other academic institutions and industry partners. Her most recent extension is working with UT Austin's OnRamps to develop a Short-form Video course. She has authored both academic and industry publications including Immersive in a University Setting white paper for the University of Texas at Austin, Headspace VR on Medium, Fan Favorites in Strategy + Business, T is for Transmedia: Learning through Transmedia Play, and co-author of the book, Reading in a Participatory Culture.

As a creator, Erin creatively builds connected, immersive experiences.  Current projects in development include Eyes on the Sky, a transmedia storyworld.

Her personal creative projects include CARPE´ Games, a new Augmented Reality and SMART Kit game and Winklebeans, a sensor-based toy that connects to a data-driven story world.  She is known for her social entrepreneurship activities in founding  Zoey’s Room, one of the first social media programs connected to a licensed afterschool program for young girls. 

As a strategist, Erin consults with private and public companies in the areas of audience engagement, creative strategy, and transmedia storytelling. She has been a frequent guest lecturer worldwide at universities as well as industry conferences such as SXSW, Sandbox Summit, and Nintendo Marketing Summit. Currently, she’s a strategic consultant to Infinity Festival.

Erin was a founding member of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab holding the positions of Managing Creative Director and Research Fellow from 2010-2018. Before that, she was Research Director for Project New Media Literacies at MIT and also has conducted classes as a Visiting Lecturer at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Harvard University’s Project Zero Summer Institute.  She is a graduate of Emerson College and has her Master of Fine Arts degree from Maine Media Workshops + College.  

Dr. Straubhaar is the Amon G. Carter Centennial Professor of Communications in the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the current Director of the Moody College of Communications’ Latino and Latin American Studies Program and was the Director of the Center for Brazilian Studies within the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, 2003-2006.

His primary teaching, research and writing interests are in global media, digital media and the digital divide in the U. S. and other countries, Brazilian and Latin American television, media and migration, and global television production and flow. His graduate teaching includes media theory, global media, media and migration, Latin American media, and ethnographic/qualitative research methods. His undergraduate teaching covers the same range plus introduction to media studies. He does research in Brazil, other Latin America countries, Europe, Asia and Africa, and has taken student groups to Latin America and Asia. He has done seminars abroad on media research, television programming strategies, and telecommunications privatization. He is on the editorial board for Communication Theory, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Comunicación y Sociedad, Chinese Journal of Communication, and Revista INTERCOM.

His edited book, Passarelli, B., Straubhaar, J., & A. Cuevas-Cerveró. (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of Research on Comparative Approaches to the Digital Age Revolution in Europe and the Americas. Hershey PA, USA: Information Science Reference-IGI Global. His book, Television In Latin America, co-authored with John Sinclair, was published by BFI/Routledge in 2013. His edited book, The Persistence of Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class and the Digital Divide in Austin, Texas, was published in 2011 by University of Texas Press. His book, World Television from Global to Local, was published by Sage in 2007. A revised 9th edition of his textbook with Bob LaRose, Media Now, was published by Wadsworth. He had an edited book with Othon Jambeiro, Políticas de informação e comunicação, jornalismo e inclusão digital: O Local e o Global em Austin e Salvador (Information and communication policy, journalism and digital inclusion: The local and global in Austin and Salvador); Federal University of Bahia Press: 2005.

He has published numerous articles and essays on global media, digital inclusion, Brazilian television, Latin American media, comparative analyses of new television technologies, media flow and culture, and other topics appearing in a number of journals, edited books, and elsewhere.

Dr. Scott is an associate professor in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests include fan studies, media convergence, digital and participatory culture, social media, transmedia storytelling, comic book culture, and gender studies. She comes to Austin after previously teaching Film and Media Studies in the Department of English at Arizona State University, and serving as a Mellon Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center of Digital Learning + Research at Occidental College. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, and the University of Southern California. 

Dr. Scott’s scholarly monograph, Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry (NYU Press, 2019), considers the gendered tensions underpinning the media industry’s embrace of fans as demographic tastemakers, professionals, and promotional partners within convergence culture. Surveying the politics of participation within digitally mediated fan cultures, this project addresses the "mainstreaming" of fan and geek culture over the past decade, how media industries have privileged an androcentric conception of the fan, and the marginalizing effect this has had on female fans. 

She is also the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (2018), an anthology that brings together an international and interdisciplinary collection of nearly 60 established scholars to reflect on the state of the field and to point to new directions in fan studies research.

Her scholarly work has appeared in the journals Transformative Works and Cultures, Cinema Journal, New Media & Society, Participations, Feminist Media Histories, and Critical Studies in Media Communication as well as numerous anthologies, including Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (2nd Edition), How to Watch Television, The Participatory Culture Handbook, and Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica. In 2012, she was selected to represent the current generation of fan scholars to interview Henry Jenkins for the 20th Anniversary edition of Textual Poachers. She has guest blogged for the Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier and in media res, among others.

Jennifer McClearen is a feminist media scholar whose work examines the cultural production of difference in contemporary society with an emphasis on the mediation of gender, race, and sexuality in sports media. In the classroom, she blends theory and practice to train students to critically analyze and produce media culture.

Dr. McClearen’s first book, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC, will be published with the Studies in Sports Media Series with the University of Illinois Press in April 2021. Her research can also be found in Communication and Sport, the International Journal of Communication, Continuum, New Formations, Feminist Media Studies, and The Velvet Light Trap, among others.

She is an affiliated faculty member in the Center for Sports Communication and Media at UT and a diversity scholar with the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan.

Dr. McClearen teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on gender, race, and sexuality in film and television as well as courses focused specifically on sports media.