Center for Film, Television & New Media @ UCSB

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Speaker Biographies (Page 1)

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Art Battson is Director of Instructional Resources, UC Santa Barbara.

John Blossom is Professor and Director, California AHEC, UC Fresno.

Lynn Burnstan is the Director of UCSD-TV and UCTV. In 1993, she joined the UCSD-TV team and began creating a unique television station that provides the San Diego area with locally produced, regionally focused programming on a wide variety of topics. In 2000, the University of California launched the system wide satellite channel, UCTV, with Lynn as Director. Building on the success of UCSD-TV, UCTV draws on programming from all the campuses and the national laboratories that are part of the University of California. Previously, she produced and edited award winning films in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Diego for television, film festivals, corporate training and commercials. A long time resident of California, she graduated from UCSD and received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Stephanie Couch is Director of Statewide Initiatives for the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC).

Pamela de Maigret is a documentary film maker and writer who specializes in ethnographic and wildlife productions.

Jennifer Earl is Professor Sociology and Director of the Center for Information Technology and Society. Her research interests include social movements, sociology of law, internet, and technology and Society. She recently received a multi-year NSF Career Award for “The Internet, Activism and Social Movements.”

Anna Everett, Professor and Chair of the Film and Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara, has made an important argument against the myth of the digital divide by way of demonstrating that blacks in this country have historically been early adopters of media technologies, from the movie camera to the internet. She brought together an international range of scholars for the Ford Foundation-supported two conferences on AfroGEEKS: Global Blackness and the Digital Public Sphere. She was most recently a recipient of a Golden Torch award from the National Association of Black Engineers for her many contributions to the study of race, media, and technology. Her books include: Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism; New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextualy (ed. with John Caudwell); and Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace (in press).

Alison Gang is the Communications Manager for UCTVand UCSD-TV, leading their marketing, public relations and distribution efforts, helping to build awareness and support across San Diego County, the state, and the country. Alison received a B.A. in Film Studies from Columbia University. After a few years in Los Angeles, she returned to San Diego to earn her Masters degree in Mass Communication and Media Studies from SDSU, before arriving at UCTV in 2003.

Dan Gillmor is an online journalist, founder of the Center for Citizen Media and author of We The Media.

Dan Greenstein is UC Associate Vice Provost for Scholarly Information, and University Librarian of the California Digital Library, UC Office of the President.

Jennifer Holt is an Assistant Professor in the Film and Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara. Her current research looks at the effects of deregulation and current policy on the industrial structure and entertainment products of today's global media conglomerates. She has published articles in various journals and anthologies including Film Quarterly, Film & History, Quality Popular Television and Screen Decades: American Culture/American Cinema. She is finishing a book entitled In Deregulation We Trust: The Business of Entertainment in the New Hollywood.

J.D. Lasica is a strategist, journalist, author and social media pioneer. He is co-founder of Ourmedia.com, a free community site and learning center for user-created video and audio, and a partner in Outhink Media, a social media company that enables collaboration. J.D. is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts in the grassroots media movement. His book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation explores the personal media revolution and the emerging media landscape. He writes about citizen media and social networks at Socialmedia.biz (a podcast and blog), Darknet.com and his videoblog, RealPeopleNetwork.com. CNET named him one of the 100 top media bloggers in the world.

Taehyun Lee is the first Industry Fellow at the Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media. Mr. Lee is Television Producer and Director at the Korean Broadcasting System, a leading public broadcasting company with 4 TV channels, 7 radio channels, 16 regional broadcasting stations, 10 overseas offices (including Japan, the U.S. and Europe), Internet TV, and mobile telephone service. He has produced and directed 12 TV programs including documentaries (on topics such as Zen, Buddhism, and adopted children), live shows, news, drama and election broadcasting. His year-long project at the Center is to study how a public broadcasting company like KBS should evolve, through new policies, programs, and multiple media platforms, in the new media environment.

Sharmini Peries is Executive Director of Policy and Development, Independent World Television, The Real News (Canada), a non-profit web and video news network. Prior to this she was an economic and political affairs journalist with several publications including Frontline, India. She has served as Executive Director of several international/ National human rights organizations, they include: International Freedom of Expression Exchange/Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the Royal Commission on Systemic Racism in the Criminal Justice System (Appointed by the Governor General of Canada), the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants and Manager, Human Rights Code Review Task Force in Ontario. Most recently she was Foreign Affairs Adviser for the Government of Venezuela.

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