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. From 2021-2023, I was Assistant Professor of Professional Writing in the Department of English at Jacksonville State University (Alabama). I received my PhD from the Rhetoric and Composition Program at 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 fall 2023, I am teaching LMC 3206: Communication and Culture. In September, I will present on “Developing Student Professional Identities and Portfolios Through a Studio Course” at the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) Conference. In October, I will present a proceedings paper at the ACM-SIGDOC conference, focused on communication design researchers’ perceptions of feminist methodologies.
I presented “Who are we accountable to?: Balancing stakeholders and compliance in a grant-funded undergraduate experiential learning project” at the virtual Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) conference in June. This presentation discussed the work of students in my fall 2022 Writing for Social Media course at JSU, who were tasked by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education to create content and strategy for a new statewide campaign to retain talented college graduates, called “All in Alabama.”
My November 2022 Technical Communication article, part of a special issue on localized usability and agency in design, analyzes the daily digital tasks of a group of older adults aged 70+. This article is based on my dissertation, Digital Age: A Study of Older Adults’ User Experiences with Technology, which recently won the Computers & Composition 2021-22 Hugh Burns Dissertation Award. I am currently preparing a monograph that addresses these issues through building older adult user personas for both researchers and practitioners. I am also embarking on a new research project that explores students’ learner experiences in undergraduate technical and professional communication (TPC) programs. The first publication from this project, in the open-access Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, discusses “Building and sustaining undergraduate English internship programs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.”
When I am not hastily typing or Photoshopping, I enjoy binge-watching British comedy on Netflix, making giant pots of soup, trying new teas, and volunteering with the AARP Foundation.
Please feel free to contact me through any of my social media accounts below, or by email at allegra@gatech.edu. I would love to have a conversation with you online.