Hello!
My name is Michele Ferris Dobles, and I am a professor and researcher at the University of Costa Rica, Central America. I obtained my Ph.D. at the Communication Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago with the support of a Fulbright Scholarship.
I am a media and communication researcher, a documentary filmmaker, and a facilitator of collaborative communication projects with communities and social organizations.
I am interested in how media technology enables the existence of social networks, relationships, and practices across time, space, and national borders.
My dissertation research focused on the interconnections between communication technologies, media infrastructures, and human mobility. Specifically, I examined the uses, meanings, and rituals of communication that migrants and people in transit experience through the use of media technology.
I won two awards with my dissertation:
My dissertation has been published as a book by Intellect/University of Chicago Press.
Check it out here: Migration in the Digital Age: An Ethnographic Study
My research interests are located in the intersection of communication and media research, science and technology studies, feminist and decolonial studies, and the social sciences. I study the interconnections between communication technologies, inter-personal communication, social organization, activism, narratives, and media infrastructure(s).
My research aims to address the political and cultural dimensions of media technology and the relation between social inequalities and technological usage and design. I am also interested in communication for social change and participatory communication projects.
Michele Ferris Dobles 