2025 Faculty Fellowship Winners
MAJS endeavors to bring faculty and students from all disciplines together to create and critically interrogate media practices and texts, and to cultivate and convene thought leaders committed to ethical reporting, production, and storytelling practices. MAJS Summer Fellowships are funded by a generous donation from a former member of LMU’s Board of Trustees to support interdisciplinary course development, research, or creative projects that address any issue or topic surrounding media industries, texts, contexts, and ethical challenges.
2025 Faculty Fellowship Winners
-
Vanessa Diaz, associate professor of Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies, for a multimedia project on “The new Latin boom: Understanding the current rise of Latin music.”
-
Junyuan Lin, assistant professor of mathematics, statistics, and data science, for research on detecting misinformation trends on social networks using AI and graph algorithms.
-
Rudy Mondragon, assistant professor of Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies, for research for a documentary about Jacob “Stitch” Duran.
-
Natalie Ngai, assistant professor of media studies, for research on how human-machine collaboration on digital media, including generative AI, animates people’s desire for a particular type of information through the promise of “joyful sharing.”
-
Lauren Smart, clinical assistant professor of journalism, for a podcast about the role of obituaries in the American relationship with death.
-
Katerina Zacharia, professor of classics and archaeology, to develop a podcast around LMU Greek Film Week.