Dr. Ben Naismith

Doctor of Philosophy - Ph.D., Applied Linguistics
Senior Assessment Scientist at Duolingo

Tell us a bit about your current job.

My current role is as a Senior Assessment Scientist at Duolingo where I work on the Duolingo English Test (DET). In this role, I support the DET’s mission of using assessment technology to lower barriers and increase opportunities for English language learners everywhere. To do so, I collaborate on a range of projects related to test design, including automated scoring, test development, and validity research. I share research findings and information about the DET to stakeholders in a variety of mediums and forums including conference presentations and journals. 

Did your career take the path you expected after finishing your PhD?

After finishing my PhD, I was open to working in either industry or academia, and I did not have a fixed career path in mind. I am grateful that my current role affords me many of my favorite aspects of both worlds – I have the opportunity to conduct interesting research, attend conferences, and interact with the research community. At the same time, I get to work in a company which is making an enormous, positive impact on the world. (I do miss the classroom, however!) 

Can you speak a little about how your HE project did (or did not) help you land in your current position? Is it something you continued to work on in any way, and if so, how?

My experience with Humanities Engage definitely played a role in landing my current position. I was fortunate enough to receive funding for two separate projects, one as a linguistic consultant for an educational technology startup, and one as a Natural Language Processing researcher for the Pitt Teaching and Learning Center. Both of these experiences were directly relevant to the work I do now and demonstrated to my employers my ability and interest to work in these contexts.

Dr. Charles Athanasopoulos

Ph.D., Rhetoric & Communication, University of Pittsburgh
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies at Gonzaga University

Hello! I’m Charles Athanasopoulos, and I’m an alumnus of the Humanities Engage project (class of 2022). In the Summer of 2020, I completed an internship with Monument Lab which is a public art and research institute. I tracked conflicts surrounding public monuments funded by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. While working on that project, I developed an original research plan to track the creation and conflicts surrounding emerging Black Lives Matter monuments. Separately, I worked with performance artist Marisa Williams (Assistant Professor of Visual Art with a research focus on Blackness, University of Virginia) on what would eventually become her project Unsettling Grounds. Finally, I wrote a short essay “Iconography in the Age of Black Lives Matter” where I argue that the protests, chants, performance, murals, and photography emerging from the Black Lives Matter movement constitute a form of political expression that fits the broad definition of monuments as statements of power and presence in public. My summer internship was a wonderful experience that has continued to positively impact the trajectory of my career.

Tell us a bit about your current job.

I am in my second year as an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Gonzaga University. My responsibilities include teaching, researching, advising, and academic service. I teach a wide range of courses including “COMM 100: Communication and Speech”, “COMM 210: Understanding Meaning Making”, “COMM 350: The Politics of Social Memory”, and “COMM 420: Critical/Cultural Communication”. So far, COMM 420 has been my favorite course to teach as I get to teach students about the foundations of Cultural studies in Marxism, critical theory, Black studies, and postcolonial theory. Relatedly, my research interests lie at the intersection of Black studies, cultural studies, and media studies. I primarily focus on the contexts of post/Ferguson America and Puerto Rican culture through an engagement with the Black radical tradition (e.g., Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, and Hortense Spillers). My forthcoming book project Black Iconoclasm: Public Symbols, Racial Progress & Post/Ferguson America (Palgrave Macmillan) offers an orientation of “Black Iconoclasm” – a conceptual iconoclasm aimed toward uprooting the rigid Western values of race, gender, class, and sexuality. These values emerge through iconography: those social codes of Western Man reflected by a corresponding rolodex of public symbols (whether positive or negative) in American culture. More than just the physical destruction of an artwork or the refusal to watch a film, Black iconoclasm is an orientation toward the liminal spaces of disorder created by Black radical disruption. At the same time, this orientation wrestles with the impulse to construct Black counter-icons – in activism, theory, communicative situations, and cultural products like film and street art – which mimic Western culture in conceptual form through the search for epistemological closure. Beyond the book project, I am developing grant-funded research in both Puerto Rico and Greece which engage theory, archival materials, public monuments, and auto/ethnography based on my experiences as someone who is both Afro-Puerto Rican and Greek-Roma.

Did your career take the path you expected after finishing your PhD?

I’d say so. When I decided on PhD school, my hope was to dedicate my life to researching and teaching about issues of power and resistance. My participation in the Humanities Engage project was part of a broader process in which I dedicated myself to refining my analytical skills and expanding my theoretical purview into the world of public/street art.

Can you speak a little about how your HE project did (or did not) help you land in your current position? Is it something you continued to work on in any way, and if so, how?

First, I’d like to sincerely thank Dr. Caitlin F. Bruce (Associate Professor of Communication, University of Pittsburgh) for recommending that I apply for a Humanities Engage grant. I had always found myself enamored with street art growing up in Queens, NY, but I had never considered writing about it. Engaging with Dr. Bruce’s scholarship on graffiti showed me that it was possible; when she suggested an internship with Monument Lab via Humanities Engage, I was ecstatic. My internship with Monument Lab occurred amidst the burgeoning 2020 George Floyd/Breonna Taylor uprisings as well as my own developing research around Black Lives Matter and post/Ferguson American culture. This internship helped hone my understanding of the cultural conflicts emerging over the creation/destruction of monuments which oftentimes manifested as acts of graffiti or muralism. This eventually led me to find a then-newly created mural in Pittsburgh, PA which I analyze in a chapter of Black Iconoclasm. The internship provided me with an opportunity to publish a public-facing short essay which introduced my scholarship to new audiences of scholar, artists, and activists. Further, the internship was the beginning of an on-going working relationship with Marisa Williamson and new networking opportunities including Marisa’s suggestion that I attend the Black & Indigenous Futures Convening held at Emerson College in September 2023. There, I was further able to immerse myself within an Afro/Indigenous space of scholars, artists, and activists. As I develop my research on Afro-Puerto Rican subjectivity, I find myself drawn to the conflicting stories told in official museum spaces of Puerto Rico (e.g., Castillo San Cristobal) and in the street art I came across in majority Afro-Puerto Rican areas like Santurce, Loiza, and Aguirre. Similarly, I find my curiosity piqued by the use of graffiti by Roma peoples in Greece who deploy symbols like George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and hands up don’t shoot to denounce anti-Roma discrimination.

Anything else you think might be helpful/interesting to current doctoral students at Pitt?

This is the time to try new things and to expand your theoretical vocabulary. Seek out new audiences, new genres of popular culture artifacts. Find ways to fuse your developing theoretical repertoire alongside something material and relevant societal contexts. You’ll be surprised how much it can potentially unsettle and expand your perspective. My professors used to tell me all the time: “use all this free time you have. Once you become a professor, you’ll be much busier.” It wasn’t until I graduated that I realized how right they were. So, I guess my advice is to give yourself time to experiment and see where the journey takes you.

Dr. Brittney Knotts

Doctor of Philosophy - Ph.D., Childhood Studies
ACLS Leading Edge Fellow, Vital Voices Global Partnership, Program Coordinator