I am a scholar of rhetoric and writing in digital spaces. I have been intrigued by Internet culture and technologically mediated discourse ever since my days of LiveJournal Harry Potter roleplay. Because of my upbringing as a child of the internet, my research examines intersecting facets of identity—gender, sexuality, race, age, class, disability, religion—asking how these differences mediate our experiences with digital tools and interfaces, and in turn how those technologies influence the writing of our diverse selves.
I am Assistant Professor of Technical Communication in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I received my PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University, and received bachelor’s degrees in Professional Writing and Women’s & Gender Studies and a master’s in Digital Rhetoric & Professional Writing, from Michigan State University. Go green and boiler up!
In summer 2025, I will…
- present…
- “Mind the theory/practice gap: Combining digital writing episteme and techne in the content strategy classroom” with Liza Potts (Michigan State University) at Computers & Writing in Athens, GA (May 15–17)
- “Civic literacy and social change lessons through a local teaching case: Designing a crisis communication response to the June 2024 Atlanta water main breaks” at Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) in Rolla, MO (June 14–15)
- “Against the reading response: Making meaning through social annotation and authentic content genres” with Gavin P. Johnson (Texas Christian University) at the IEEE Professional Communication Society in Sønderborg, Denmark (July 20–23)
- write…
- chapters on ageism and technology design for my monograph, Older Adults, Aging, and Technical Communication, which is based on my 2022 Computers and Composition Hugh Burns Award-winning dissertation, Digital Age: A Study of Older Adults’ User Experiences with Technology
- an Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Design of Communication (ACM-SIGDOC) paper on community-based learning and design collaboration with nonprofits, based on research conducted with Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Award-winning researcher (and newly admitted Georgia Tech Masters in Human-Computer Interaction student) Natasha Valluri
- build…
- infrastructure for the ACM-SIGDOC Student Research Competition (SRC) with SRC Co-Chair Bradley Dilger (Purdue University), mentoring undergraduate and graduate students to on developing their research to present at the 2025 conference in Lubbock, TX (October 24–25)
- relationships with 6 Atlanta-area nonprofits and arts organizations for LMC 3415: Content Strategy, a class where students build websites and social media to put their growing research, writing, and design skills into practice in service of community partners
Recently, I have presented on…
- “Bridging the Classroom and Workplace: The High-Impact Practices of a Technical and Professional Communication Studio Course” at the IEEE Professional Communication Society Conference in Pittsburgh, PA (July 2024)
- “Designing Feminist Methodologies: Foregrounding Gender, Positionality, and Justice in Communication Design Research” at the ACM-SIGDOC Conference in Orlando, FL (October 2023)
- “‘Who Are We Accountable To?’ Balancing Stakeholders and Compliance in a Grant-Funded Undergraduate Experiential Learning Project” at the virtual ATTW conference (June 2023)
When I am not hastily typing or Photoshopping, I enjoy trying all of the different foods on Buford Highway, binge-watching British comedy on Netflix, collecting teapots, singing in a choir, and volunteering with the AARP Foundation.
Please feel free to contact me by email at allegra [at] gatech [dot] edu. I would love to have a conversation with you online.