Members — The Platform Lab

Director

Coordinators

**Elena Altheman**

Elena Altheman is a PhD candidate at Concordia University in Montréal. Her research examines the political economy of the Brazilian animation industry, focusing on animated labour and public policies. Awarded with the Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program in 2018 for her research on animated narratives, her more recent work has been published on Animation Studies journal.
Elena is also a scriptwriter and has been nominated twice for the International Emmy Awards. She teaches screenwriting and has written for productions such as *Chico Bento e a Goiabeira Maraviósa* (TBA), *Irmão do Jorel* (2014), *Nutty Boy* (2022) and *Wake Up, Carlo!* (2023). Her works can be seen on Netflix, HBOMax, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central and others. She is the co-author of Irmão do Jorel: Livro Fenomenal, published in 2021 by Harper Collins.

**Colin Jon Mark Crawford**

Colin is a PhD candidate at Concordia University whose research critically examines how and why Big Tech is moving into the culture industries of film and television. His work pays particular attention to the relationships between smartness, datafication, and financialization in media industries, infrastructures, and cultures.
He is a recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Scholarship, and the authour of Netflix’s Speculative Fictions: Financializing Platform Television.

Faculty Members

**Zeynep Arsel**

Zeynep Arsel is Professor of Marketing and Concordia University Research Chair in Consumption, Markets, and Society. Her research interrogates the intersection of technology and markets and its sociocultural implications. She is working on an SSHRC-funded research program about how technology and platforms have shaped surveillance, work, service interactions, expertise, and experiences and expressions of people with disabilities across four interrelated projects.

**Stefanie Duguay**

Stefanie Duguay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. Her research focuses on the influence of digital media technologies in everyday life, with particular attention to the intersection of sexual identity, gender, and social media. This has included studies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people’s use of social media, dating apps, and multiple platforms for digital self-representation. Stefanie’s research has been published in *New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Information, Communication & Society* and other international, peer-reviewed journals.

**Ishita Tiwary**

Ishita Tiwary's research interests include video cultures, media infrastructures, migration, contraband media practices, and media aesthetics. She has published essays in *Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies*, *Post Script: Essays in Film and Humanities*, *Culture Machine,* *MARG: Journal of Indian Art*, and in edited collections on topics of media piracy, video histories, and streaming platforms.

She is currently working on two projects. The first is her book monograph that traces the history of analog video cultures in India through an infrastructural lens. The second research project tracks the migration of pirated media objects and people from China to India via the Nepal border through bazaar spaces.

**Fenwick McKelvey**

Fenwick McKelvey is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. He studies the digital politics and policy, appearing frequently as an expert commentator in the media and intervening in media regulatory hearings. He is the author of *Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed* (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Award. He is co-author of *The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics* (Peter Lang, 2012) with Greg Elmer and Ganaele Langlois. His research has been published in journals including *New Media and Society*, the *International Journal of Communication*, public outlets such as The Conversation and Policy Options, and been reported by The Globe and Mail, CBC The Weekly and CBC The National. He is also a member of the Educational Review Committee of the Walrus Magazine.

Student Members

**Jake Pitre**

Jake Pitre is a PhD candidate in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. He received his Master’s degree in Film Studies from Carleton University. His work has been published in *Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images*, *Transformative Works and Cultures*, *New Media & Society*, and *Television & New Media*, and he has chapters in the edited collections *Representation in Steven Universe* (Palgrave 2020) and *Serial Killers in Contemporary Television* (Routledge 2022). His SSHRC-funded research brings together platform studies and theories of futurity to chart the technopolitics of digital capitalism. He is also an active journalist and has been published in *The Globe and Mail*, *Columbia Journalism Review*, *Pitchfork*, *JSTOR Daily*, *Maisonneuve*, *Jacobin*, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @jakeadampitre.

**Aurélie Petit**

Aurélie Petit is a PhD candidate in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. She previously completed her Master’s degree in Film Studies at La Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, in collaboration with l’École Normale Supérieure and Paris 7. Her research explores the links between online board culture and anime, with a focus on far-right ideologies of racism and sexism. Another ongoing research interest of hers has been the reception of Japanese pornographic animation in France and North America. In 2020-2021, she operated as the President of the Film Doctoral Student Association. She is currently a member of the Feminist Media Studio and of TAG, Milieux Institute’s research cluster. She was the former Publicity and Promotions Co-Coordinator at the Centre for Gender Advocacy. Her Twitter handle is @aurelievpetit.

**Sneha Kumar**

Sneha Kumar is a PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. They received their MA in Film Studies from Carleton University, where they wrote their graduate thesis on the online Carmilla fandom as a community of queer feeling. Their research interests lie at the intersection of new media and fandom, specifically looking at how affect travels within the online fandoms of the transnational lesbian web series and how it intersects with nation, caste, class, race and neurodiversity thereby replicating power hierarchies. Additionally, they are also interested in the ways in which desire gets coded on fan platforms. Their work has been published in the Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures and RENDER. You can find them on Tumblr @skbaba14

Insook Park

Insook Park is a PhD student in Film & Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. Her research interests are media technology and industry studies. Her work investigates socioeconomic dynamics within the Korean platform landscape.
Specifically, her research focuses on elucidating two divergent dimensions of the global diffusion of Korean popular culture. While Korean dramas predominantly depend on U.S.-based streaming giants in their production and distribution, Korean popular music agencies opt to establish their independent platforms, consolidating global fan engagement and augmenting their financial returns. Beyond this, she is interested in the Korean messenger app Kakao Talk's pursuit of monopolization and the strategic significance of content accessibility and community building in its overarching strategy.

Sudipto Basu

Sudipto Basu is a third year PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University. His ongoing research is about the entanglement of the Cold War-era discourses of population management with infrastructure projects and developmental experiments in the Global South, particularly India.
He is a research associate on the Against Catastrophe project (PI: Prof. Orit Halpern), which is a part of the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded Governing Through Design research cluster. He has previously worked on the intersections of experimental cinema since the Cold War, cybernetics and the Anthropocene; post-war Bombay cinema’s political economy and the experimental turn in Films Division India.
His written work has been published in APRJA, IIC Quarterly and Critical Collective, and a video essay he co-directed, Tracts of Dust (2018), has shown in Bangkok Biennial and Little Cinema International Festival, Kolkata, among other venues.

Ananya

Ananya is a PhD Student in the Film & Moving Image Studies Program. She has an MPhil in Women's Studies and a Master's in Film Studies from Jadavpur University.
She is interested in autonomist theory, feminist science and technology studies, and media industry studies. Her current research focuses on the informatic labor that is congealed in the assembly of algorithmic recommender systems. She also studies how the gendered experience of time and space shapes the trajectories of India's creative and cognitive workers.

Kathryn Armstrong

Kathryn Armstrong (she/her) is a SSHRC Research Fellow and PhD Candidate of Concordia’s Communication Department. Her work examines the Canadian public media system, including Canadian government's approach to international media distribution and its handling of media partnerships and content development. Kathryn specializes in Canada’s international treaty co-production and how Canadian media producers forge these agreements.
Kathryn utilizes her professional experience alongside her academic expertise in her current PhD research. Her past work in producer advocacy at the Canadian Media Producers Association as well as her management of international director and producer relations for the Toronto International Film Festival continue to drive her research inquiries.

Aviva Majerczyk

Aviva Majerczyk is an M.A. student in Media Studies at Concordia University in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal. Her M.A. research is focussed on the female incel community, "heteropessimism," and the affective qualities of TikTok sub-cultures. Her research asks: What do videos from the TikTok “Femcel” community tell us about how this ideology functions? What do these videos communicate about the issues of contemporary girlhood and why so many young people are attracted to this content?
A writer and media-maker, Majerczyk also produces freelance cultural criticism and hosts a long-running radio show on CJLO 1690AM.

Amelle Margaron

Amelle Margaron is an MA student in Media Studies at Concordia University. She is interested in digital storytelling and internet art, particularly as relating to the themes of performance, spectatorship, and user agency. Focusing on a type of blogging content called “web-weaving”, Amelle explores how platformed creative practice can link private narratives into broader webs of community storytelling.
Her thesis explores the formation and values of creative networked communities on the social media platform Tumblr. More generally, Amelle’s research is interested in visual media, art history, and platform studies.

Robert Hunt

Robert Hunt is a PhD candidate in communication at Concordia University. Hunt received his MA in media studies from Concordia and BA in English from Emory University. His work has been published in *Social Media + Society*, the *Journal of Information Policy*, and the edited collection *Affective Politics of Digital Media* (Routledge, 2021). He is also the General Coordinator of the Concordia Research and Education Workers (CREW) union.
Rob’s doctoral research investigates the unfolding relationship between artificial intelligence technologies and office work. Analyzing the human capital management software industry, the culture of data-driven management, and the scientific discourses that support both, Hunt explores how the contemporary office—whether a physical, sensor-rich space, a platformized network of remote workers, or a hybrid of both—functions as a laboratory for continuous and ubiquitous experimentation.
His other research interests include: biometric, psychometric, and affective surveillance; content discoverability on cultural platforms; AI in digital advertising; datafication in the online attention economy; AI policy; and the political economy of the Canadian AI industry.

Oliver Joncus

With an undergraduate degree in English and a Graduate Diploma in Communications, Oliver’s academic journey has spanned from deep textual analysis to understanding complex media ecosystems.

Oliver’s current research focuses on the intricate dynamics of 'State Platform Capitalism' (SPC), an emergent paradigm where digital platforms and state directives converge, most notably in the US and China. His investigative lens primarily focuses on the strategies employed by global powers like Beijing and Washington in leveraging their native digital platforms to achieve broader geopolitical-economic agendas.

**Santino Ciarma**

Santino is an MA student in Film Studies at Concordia University, having also completed a BA in Art History and Film Studies at the same institution. His research interests include transmedia studies of comic books and manga, and the transnational history of animation and anime industries. He is also interested in studying how fan practices and participatory cultures become extensions of these texts, particularly through digital platforms. Most recently, he has been researching the transnational history of technological shifts in animation production and the adoption of 3DCG technology in anime.

**Cole Velders**

Cole Velders is a MA student in the Film and Moving Image Studies program at Concordia University. Their research interests are primarily focused on content creators, examining creator cultures and their interactions with digital platforms. Other interests include transhumanist futurities in contemporary media, the development of labor practices in digital spaces, and the reproduction of transmedial artifacts in online fan communities. Their current project examines content creators on TikTok and the methodologies they use to maintain relevancy on a discovery-based platform.

**Janice Ka-Wa Cheung**

Janice Ka-Wa Cheung is an artist and researcher born in Hong Kong. She received her Master’s degree in media art at the City University of Hong Kong, and her work was presented at ISEA 2016 and other conferences. Janice is currently a PhD student in the Humanities program at Concordia University. She continues to pursue research-creation study with interest in examining the technologically filtered women’s self-imaginary through installation art. Her work explores how cultural, social, and economic values are inscribed, circulated, and practiced through digital filters and hence mediating users’ practices. Her creation work aims to reveal one’s postmodern, fragmented, and polymorphic digital identity.

**Andre Maffioletti**

Andre Maffioletti is a PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University. He has a Master’s degree in Film from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. His current research focuses on the media ecology of the works of Japanese director Sono Sion. He is also part of the editorial collective of the graduate student-run *Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies,* as well as the Film Review Editor for the *ejcjs: Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies*.

Affiliate Researchers

**Roslina Chai**

Roslina Chai is a strategy process facilitator, conflict mediator, and executive mentor to senior leaders navigating high-stakes situations. She received her Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (researching the superapp-society interface through a corporate social innovation, corporate governance, and value architecture lens) from Ecole des Ponts Business School (Paris). Informed by a social justice sensibility, Roslina is particularly interested in grounding the explication of the emerging superapp phenomenon in 1) nascent theorisation of the digital object, 2) the nexus of the corporation as a specific legal entity and theory of the firm, and 3) culturally specific digital ethics. Her work is published in Sage and Ethikos. Aside from superapps, Roslina researches and speaks on conflict, compassion and human flourishing, and is an amateur improvisational actress.

Affiliate Faculty

**Jacqueline Ristola**

Jacqueline Ristola is a Lecturer in Animation (Digital) in the Department of Film and Television at the University of Bristol. She received her PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies from Concordia University, Montreal.

Her research areas include animation/anime studies, media industry studies, and queer representation.

Her work is published in Synoptique, Con a de animación, and Animation Studies Online Journal, where she was awarded the inaugural Maureen Furniss Student Essay Award. She also co-edited a special issue on LGBTQ Animation for Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, and has a chapter in the edited collection Representation in Steven Universe (Palgrave 2020).

**Orit Halpern**

Orit Halpern is Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard. She has held numerous visiting scholar positions including at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, IKKM Weimar, and at Duke University. She is currently working on two projects. The first is a history of automation, intelligence, and freedom; the second project examines extreme infrastructures and the history of experimentation at planetary scales in design, science, and engineering.
She has also published widely in many venues including Critical Inquiry, Grey Room, and Journal of Visual Culture, and E-Flux. Her first book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke UP 2015) investigates histories of big data, design, and governmentality. Her recent book with Robert Mitchell (2023) is titled the Smartness Mandate. The book is a genealogy of our current obsession with smart technologies and artificial intelligence.

Julie Yujie Chen

Julie Yujie Chen is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at the University of Toronto (Mississauga) and holds a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Information (St. George). She studies the transformation of work and worker's life in relation to the digital technologies, capitalism, and globalization. She is the co-author of Media and Management (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and the lead author of Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (Emerald, 2018) which is the first book-length research on the largest social media in China—namely, WeChat. Chen publishes widely on issues related to digital labor and platform studies. Her work has appeared in journals including New Media & Society, Socio-Economic Review, Javnost - The Public, Work, Employment and Society, Chinese Journal of Communication, China Perspectives, and Triple C. A full list of her publications can be found at the Google Scholar page. Currently, she is working on a SSHRC-funded project to examine the relations between imaginary and application of data-driven artificial intelligence and the organization and value of human labor in China.