I am a PhD candidate (all but dissertation) in Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at MIT. I study social media cultures, influencers/digital content creators, and platformization of creative labor using digital ethnographic methods and in-depth interviews. My research interests also include issues of identity, femininity, and social advocacy.

I am currently writing my dissertation, supervised by Professors Jonathan Ong, Emily West, and Ozan Asik. My dissertation includes in-depth interviews and digital ethnography with digital content creators based in Turkey, who depend on social media for livelihood and weigh in on controversial political issues and social advocacies in the context of an authoritarian government.

In Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, I will be completing my dissertation at MIT through the Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. At UMass Amherst, I’ve held roles as a graduate instructor and research assistant. In addition to teaching courses like Writing as Communication, Interpersonal Communication and Culture, and Public Speaking, I’ve been a research assistant to my advisor Jonathan Ong.

In March 2023, I co-organized a workshop with Jonathan Ong in the Communication Hub at UMass Amherst. The Asian American Digital Politics Workshop brought together experts, scholars, practitioners, and graduate students to discuss the role of digital media in Asian American politics.

I have a master’s degree in Communication from North Carolina State University and a BA in English Language and Literature from Istanbul University. After college, until I went back to academia, I took five years to work at a global advertising agency in Istanbul as a digital account executive and social media specialist.