Our People

Dr. Matthew Jungsuk Howard is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication. As an Asian/Americanist Media Historian, he is interested in the ways we can reckon with mass media phenomena over longer periods of time and broader geographical entanglements, as well as the ways that such entanglements shape and are shaped by the lives of ordinary people. A keen scholar of empire in the age of social media, video games, and other "new" media, Dr. Howard likes to ask what happens when we slow down and deconstruct the power relations embedded in the ways we have fun. Drawing upon his own lived experiences, his dissertation, Rendering Hallyu: Gyopo Media Histories of the Korean Wave, examines the globalized popularity of South Korean pop culture in screen cultures, music, and esports through diasporic ways of knowing, living, and being minoritized.

David Kamerer serves as Associate Professor in Public Relations and Digital Media. He teachers courses in public relations, new media, public service communication and research methods.

Kamerer’s professional career includes 10 years in public service and health communication, including serving as director of communication for Envision, a non-profit agency which offers resources to people who are blind or have low vision; digital consultant to Via Christi Health; and public relations consultant to numerous not-for-profit organizations and small businesses.

He has taught previously at Wichita State, Kansas State and Trinity University.

Dr. Raja is an Assistant Professor of Advocacy and Social Change and is an interdisciplinary social scientist whose work centers on understanding society’s responses to complex socio-environmental problems. Ultimately, Dr. Raja seeks to advance knowledge on public engagement with climate change and to contribute to the mitigation of environmental and societal harm. To do so, she studies new mediums (Virtual Reality in particular) that show potential in capturing the public’s imagination. Her research further uses both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to understand how psychological distance—the perception that events, people, experiences, and places are physically or perceptually distant—relates to people’s engagement with climate change.

Dr. Raja has also worked as a humanitarian adviser at the United Nations, as an Environmental Grantmaking Fellow at the Solutions Project, as a Research Analyst and Multimedia Fellow at Climate Central and did a stint at the Pew Research Center and the U.S House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. She has also served as an instructor in Columbia University’s Community Impact initiative, the Harlem Children’s Zone and as a staffer for a New York State Assembly member.

Dr. Raja has also been awarded fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the World Bank, the Pace Center for Civic Engagement at Princeton University, the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources, the Environmental Grantmakers' Association (EGA), and the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

She was also one of 10 recipients nationwide awarded the Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America (ESA). Dr. Raja’s research has also been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill and used by The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).

Originally from Bronx, NY, Dr. Raja is an avid chess player and Yankees fan.

Twitter: @uroojra
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/uraja
Researcher ORCid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1745-6827