Hi! I’m Devo! I’m a Penn Presidential Ph.D. Fellow, a Fontaine Fellow, and a Joint Doctoral Candidate in the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. I presently hold three doctoral fellowship positions at Penn, the first within the Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS), where I lead and facilitate the Digital Activism & Data Justice (DADJ) research group, the second in the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARCG), and the third in the Center for Media at Risk (M@R). In addition to my doctoral fellowship positions at Annenberg, I also serve as the Vice President of the Fontaine Society at the University of Pennsylvania - a university-wide community for PhD students from underrepresented backgrounds, including those who are first-generation college graduates, from low-income families, and from groups historically excluded in higher education.

A digital native and professional internet “lurker,” my research sits at the intersection of social movement studies and digital activism, economic sociology, digital culture, and performance theory. Broadly, using digital ethnographic methods, my work examines forms of digital activism in contention with global financial markets and financial journalism to make sense of the political, cultural, and social consequences that the digitization of financial markets has had on our society. In studying these forms of financial activism, my work also reconsiders the mobilization logics undergirding the rise of social movements online while also reconsidering how we conceptualize the successes and failures of social movements in the digital age.

I began my doctoral studies intellectually consumed with how groups shape their collective identities online in order to understand why social movement participation has swelled in recent years, and this interest still remains central to my research endeavors. In examining the processual and temporal aspects of digital activism, my work also contends with the notion that collective identity formation is no longer important to the emergence and sustainment of social movements today. Rather, I argue it plays an increasingly important role, especially in a digital era where social movements appear more diffuse.

Prior to returning to academia, I spent my early career in the public service, which played a formative role in shaping my research agenda. Keenly aware of the academic-practitioner divide, I believe that academic research must be accessible and relevant to practitioners and activists since they are often best positioned to make strides in achieving the societal change we are in desperate need of. In a small effort to bridge this gap, I am fortunate enough to hold an appointment as an Associate within the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University, where I have had the opportunity to support the teaching of Visual Communication, Communication Research and Insights, and Political Communication to graduate students in the M.S. in Strategic Communication program.

I earned both an M.A. in Communication and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2024 and an M.S. in Strategic Communication from Columbia University in 2020. Before attending graduate school, I obtained my B.A. in History and Religious Studies from Arizona State University in 2016. Upon graduating, I received the highest honor awarded by the university: the Dean’s Medal Award for the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies.