Research Fellows 2026

Chad Edwards is Professor of Communication at Western Michigan University, where he researches human–machine communication and artificial intelligence. At ZeMKI, he will collaborate with researchers to advance a program of study on mediatized instructional communication, linking social robotics and large language models to mediatization theory, critical data studies, and communicative AI research. His work focuses on human–robot interaction, computer-mediated communication, and the social implications of AI in interpersonal contexts. He co-directs the Communication and Social Robotics Labs and is co-author of the textbook The Communication Age: Connecting and Engaging. Edwards has published widely in leading journals, including Human-Machine Communication, Computers in Human Behavior, and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. He previously served as Chair of the Human-Machine Communication Division of the International Communication Association and is a founding Associate Editor of Human-Machine Communication. He is also a past president of the Central States Communication Association and the recipient of multiple top-paper awards, as well as Western Michigan University’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Ana Grgic is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Theatre and Film at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania. At ZeMKI, she will collaborate with the “Film, Media Art and Popular Culture” and “Audio-Visual Media and Historiography” Labs, to expand her reflections on working with neglected and marginalised archival collections and women’s cinema heritage in the Balkans, in order to decolonise canonical and male-centred film histories of the region. Grgic’s research specializes in early cinema, Balkan and East European cinemas, feminist film heritage and critical archival practice. She is the author of monographs including Early Cinema, Modernity and Visual Culture and has co-edited volumes such as Stretching the Archive: Toward a Global Women’s Film Heritage. Her work has appeared in journals including Early Popular Visual Culture and Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Grgic has led and participated in internationally funded research projects supported by institutions such as the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the École française d’Athènes. She served as Associate Editor of Studies in World Cinema and is a member of the Executive Committee of Domitor, the international society for early cinema studies. In addition, she contributes to film heritage initiatives and serves on international film festival juries.

Rafael Grohmann is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto and Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. At ZeMKI, he will focus on worker-led AI governance, or the collective ability of workers, through unions, cooperatives, grassroots collectives, and social movements, to shape how AI is used, managed, deployed, negotiated, or rejected at work.  The fellowship will focus on two dimensions of worker-led AI governance, grounded in ongoing empirical research. First, it will examine tech cooperatives in Canada and Argentina that are developing their own AI projects. Second, the fellowship will examine cultural workers, especially screenwriters and voice actors, in the United States, Canada and Brazil who are organizing to pressure for AI policies and regulations at sectoral and national levels, in different ways. His work in critical platform studies and digital labour studies examines how workers, particularly in Latin America, organize collectively and seek to govern digital technologies such as platforms, data and artificial intelligence. He leads the DigiLabour Lab and co-lead the project Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF). Grohmann is principal investigator of multiple funded research projects on digital sovereignty and worker-owned platforms and collaborates with networks such as the AI Policy Observatory for the World of Work. He is founding editor-in-chief of Platforms & Society and has published extensively in journals such as Big Data & Society and New Media & Society. He also co-edited the SAGE Handbook of Digital Labour and engages in policy-oriented and community-based research.

Felicia Loecherbach is an Assistant Professor of Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Amsterdam (AScoR) and Faculty Research Affiliate at the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University. At ZeMKI she will explore user perceptions of algorithmic curation and information diversity, collaborating with the Labs Digital Communication and Information Diversity and Political Communication and Innovative Methods. Loecherbach’s research applies computational methods to study digital media environments, with a focus on news diversity, algorithmic curation and data donation methodologies. She has published in leading journals such as Journalism, Digital Journalism and Internet Policy Review. Her work has been recognized with awards including the KHMW Keetje Hodshon Dissertation Prize, and she has secured competitive research funding from the Dutch Research Council. Loecherbach serves as Secretary of the Computational Methods Division of the International Communication Association and sits on the editorial board of Computational Communication Research. She is also active in teaching advanced methods courses, including automated image analysis.

Sarah T. Roberts is Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, with appointments in Gender Studies, Information Studies and Labor Studies. She is currently president of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) (2025-2027). At ZeMKI, she will work with Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach, Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp and interested others to elucidate the nature of the AI imaginary as it pertains to labor, and potential modes of resistance to same. Roberts’ research examines internet and social media policy, infrastructure and governance, with a particular focus on power, geopolitics and inequality in digital environments from a feminist Science and Technology Studies perspective. She is internationally recognized for her work on commercial content moderation, a term she coined to describe the labor of moderating content on major social media platforms. Roberts is Faculty Director and co-founder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and co-director of the Minderoo Initiative on Technology and Power, and she is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. She has been widely consulted on platform governance, worker welfare and content moderation policy, and has also worked in industry, most recently as a Staff Researcher at Twitter in 2022. Her work has been featured in major media outlets and documentaries, including the Emmy-nominated film The Cleaners. Among her honors are the Carnegie Fellowship and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Barlow Pioneer Award.

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen is at Professor at Cardiff University and a leading scholar in journalism and media studies. At ZeMKI, she will be working on her next book, The Rise of Boutique Media, which examines small-scale, personality-driven and affectively charged forms of journalism that have emerged in the wake of the decline of legacy news organisations, including news influencers, podcasters, Substack newsletters and local news entrepreneurs. Wahl-Jorgensen’s research explores the relationship between citizenship, media and emotion, particularly in the context of technological change and digital transformation. She has authored five books, including Emotions, Media and Politics and Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society, and has edited major reference works such as theHandbook of Journalism Studies. Her work includes more than 130 journal articles and chapters and has been funded by organizations including the ESRC, the European Commission and the Australian Research Council. Wahl-Jorgensen currently serves as President-Elect-Select of the International Communication Association and sits on numerous editorial boards, including Journal of Communication and Journalism Studies. She is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and of the International Communication Association and has received an honorary doctorate from Roskilde University. Between 2021 and 2026, she served as University Dean of Research Environment and Culture at Cardiff University, with institutional responsibility for leading major initiatives on research culture and open research.

Patryk Wasiak is an Associate Professor at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. At ZeMKI, he will be working on a project on the history of software user interfaces as digital media infrastructure, together with the Media and Religion, and Media Change and Long-Term Transformation Processes Labs. Wasiak’s research focuses on the cultural history of computing, media and home technologies, with particular attention to state-socialist Eastern Europe and the Cold War. He currently leads several funded projects on amateur programming cultures, the Polish demoscene and the politics of software interfaces, supported by the National Science Centre of Poland and the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Wasiak has published a monograph on technological innovation in late state-socialist Poland as well as articles in journals such as IEEE Annals of the History of Computing and History and Technology. He has held fellowships from institutions including the Volkswagen Foundation and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. He is active in international research networks such as Society for the History of Technology and the History of Games community.