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 spring 2025, I will…
- travel to Orem, Utah to facilitate two workshops on accessibility for Utah Valley University’s Department of English: a session for students on designing accessible social media content and a session for faculty on creating high-impact writing courses and assignments through universal design for learning (UDL)
- teach LMC 3813: Content Strategy, which engages students in service learning to build websites and social media for 5 Atlanta-area community partners, through a collaboration with the Center for Civic Innovation (generously supported through a Short-Term Opportunity for Professional Development and Scholarly Activities [SODA] grant from Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts)
- write a proceedings paper for the IEEE Professional Communication Society (ProComm) conference with Gavin P. Johnson, focusing on alternatives for discussion board style reading responses in technical and professional writing classrooms
- collaborate with Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Award-winning undergraduate researcher Natasha Valluri to analyze survey and interview data for a qualitative study of students’ design collaboration with nonprofits in both curricular (e.g., classroom service learning) and extracurricular (e.g., student organizations and clubs) contexts
- draft chapters 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
- plan the 2025 Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Design of Communication Student Research Competition (ACM-SIGDOC SRC) with Bradley Dilger, recruiting undergraduate and graduate students to present their research at the annual conference scheduled for October 24-25 in Lubbock, TX
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 (July 2024)
- “Designing Feminist Methodologies: Foregrounding Gender, Positionality, and Justice in Communication Design Research” at the ACM-SIGDOC Conference (October 2023)
- “‘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 (June 2023)
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 by email at allegra [at] gatech [dot] edu. I would love to have a conversation with you online.