My name is Christopher J. Persaud and I am a PhD candidate, researcher, and writer. Broadly, my work explores how media and communication technologies are entangled with identity and popular culture. My research and writing projects focus on queer media and cultural production, sociotechnical systems, and new/social media. I enjoy working at the intersection of “academia” and “industry” to explore interesting questions that have the potential to change how we think about pleasure, work, and community.
I tend to leverage ethnography alongside other qualitative methods in my work, though I enjoy collaborations that integrate computational and quantitative methods as well. Alongside my academic work, I have experience doing research and expert consulting services for tech companies, media and creative firms, and nonprofit organizations.
To that end, I am a PhD candidate at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism where I am also pursuing graduate certificates in Science and Technology Studies and Visual Studies, a graduate student affiliate with the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, and a collaborator on the LGBTQ Video Game Archive. In terms of industry work, I was most recently a PhD research intern with the Sociotechnical Systems group at Intel Labs.
Before graduate school, I was a research assistant to the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England. I received my BA in Sociology, French, and LGBT Studies from Temple University. As an undergraduate research fellow through The Leadership Alliance, I spent summers at Harvard University in the Department of Sociology and the Department of the History of Science. In a past life, I was an e-sports writer, community moderator, and graphic designer in the competitive Super Smash Brothers scene.
For a professional bio in third-person, please click here.
Feel free to send an email to cpersaud@usc.edu if you’d like to talk about anything mentioned above. If you just want to say hi, that’s perfectly fine too. You can fine me on Mastodon or LinkedIn as well.