Melissa R. Meade, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Communication Technologies
College of Human Development Culture and Media
Dr. Melissa R. Meade is an assistant professor of Communication Technologies. Her research and teaching interests sit at the intersection of technology, work, labor, environment, and economic modernization and decline; digital and social media; identity and inequality (disability; class; gender; ethnic and racial relations; language); community engagement; research methods; social memory; and critical/cultural communication.
Shaped by her own experience as a first-generation college graduate growing up in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Meade’s ongoing research project is a multi-year community-based and virtual ethnography of this region and its diaspora in which she investigates the many ways that global capitalism reorganizes social difference through its regimes of resource extraction, labor displacement, and environmental classism. She is founder and director of a public digital humanities forum on which Anthracite Coal Region community members contributed their first-hand stories and artifacts illustrating life in the Coal Region. Her work bridges the gap between virtual and offline ethnography and highlights the counternarratives that residents of the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania tell about the lived experiences of deindustrialization.
Dr. Meade’s research has been published in Cultural Studies, Discourse & Communication, CineJ Cinema Journal, The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods, and in edited volumes. Her commentary has been featured in The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, NPR, The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. She holds a Ph.D. from Temple University’s Lew Klein College of Media and Communication, a master’s degree in Intercultural Communication and a Graduate Certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Albright College.
As the recipient of awards including the National Communication Association’s Donald P. Cushman Memorial Award, the Constance Coiner Award in Working-Class Studies from the Working-Class Studies Association, and several top paper awards from National Communication Association, Dr. Meade brings notable credentials to the Seton Hall University.
Dr. Meade has been a fellow of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar, and a grantee of the Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society at Villanova University, as well as a University Fellow at Temple University. Her research has also been supported by the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation and the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission for People with Disabilities, to name a few. She is currently a recipient of the National Communication Association Advancing the Discipline Grant.
Before pursuing a career in academia, Dr. Meade worked and studied in various applied areas of communication including language and society, public communication, intercultural communication, and media. She speaks fluent Spanish. Prior to coming to Seton Hall University, she was a visiting assistant professor of Digital Media and Ethnography at Allegheny College, a visiting assistant professor of Communication at Villanova University, and she taught Communication and liberal arts courses at Temple University, the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), and Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Querétaro, Mexico.
Education
- Ph.D., Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University
- M.S.Ed., University of Pennsylvania
- Postgraduate Diploma (equivalent to a master’s degree), University of the Basque Country, Spain
- B.A., Albright College
Scholarship
Scholarship and Writing
- Meade, Melissa R. & Pineda, Richard. (In press). Local and National War and Peace Journalism: Analysis of Coverage of the March 11, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings in the Basque Country’s El Diario Vasco and in Spain’s El País. Media, War, & Conflict.
- Meade, Melissa R. (2017). In the Shadow of the Coal Breaker: Cultural Extraction and Digital Dialogical Communication in the Anthracite Coal-Mining Region. Cultural Studies, 31(2-3), pp. 376-399.
- Meade, Melissa R. (2017). Critical ethnography. In J. Matthes, C. Davis, & R. Potter (Eds.) International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. Wiley-Blackwell & the International Communication Association.
- Meade, Melissa R. & Robles, Jessica S. (2017). Existential and Historical Coherence in Political Commercials. Discourse and Communication, 11(4).
- Meade, M. (11 December 2014). When words won’t come. Featured essay on NPR-affiliated WHYY.
- https://whyy.org/segments/when-the-words-wont-come-recovering-from-a-series-of-strokes-in-my-20s/
- Meade, Melissa R. (2015). Latrinalia in a Room of One’s Own: Language, Gender, and Place. In T. Lovata & E. Olton (Eds). The Materiality of Graffiti: Studying and Understanding Graffiti from Prehistory to the 21st century. Routledge.
- Meade, Melissa R. (2011). Violence, Oppression, and Double Standards in Three Colombian Films. Cine J Cinema Journal.
Selected Media Appearances and Mentions
- The 1902 Anthracite Strike: Causes and Consequences, A 120th Anniversary Evaluation. (2 October 2022 and 3 October 2022) aired on https://pcntv.com/ and published on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy8R4pBOh8g
- Creating a Space for All. (25 April 2022). NCA’s 2022 spring public program, “Creating Space for All: Communicating about Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in Our Classrooms and on Our Campuses,” was held virtually.
- Nark, J. (20 October 2020). “Trump didn’t bring coal back in Pa, but that doesn’t mean miners are backing Biden.” The Philadelphia Inquirer.
- Relentless: A Series of Recoveries. (Max Dolente, director, 2019). Interviewed for this documentary focusing on the different roads people take to opioid recovery as well as highlighting those on the front lines in their community combating the opioid epidemic in urban, suburban, and rural Pennsylvania.
- Britto, B. (13 December 2018). “Behind the hidden art of baltimore’s athroom graffiti.” The Baltimore Sun.
- Cooper, M. (4 April 2017). “As Trump tries to revive coal, a composer tries to a composer confronts mining’s past.” The New York Times.
- Gordon, E. (producer). (11 December 2014. So you love language. Then one day you lose your ability to speak. The Pulse/WHYY/NPR.
Accomplishments
Academic Distinctions
- 2022 National Communication Association Advancing the Discipline Grant.
- 2020 Best Dissertation Award, National Communication Association, Ethnography Division.
- 2020 Constance Coiner Award from Working-Class Studies Association.
- 2018 Dissertation Completion Grant, Temple University.
- 2017 Best Journal Article in Ethnography, National Communication Association.
- 2017 Best Journal Article in American Studies, National Communication Association.
- 2015-2016 University Fellow, Temple University.
- 2015 Donald P. Cushman Memorial Award for Top-Ranked Student-Authored Paper in the National Communication Association.
- 2015 John T. Warren Top-Student Paper in Ethnography/Top Competitive Paper, National Communication Association.
- 2014-2015 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
- 2014-2015 Villanova University’s Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society
- 2014-2015 HASTAC Digital Humanities Scholar at the Center for Humanities at Temple (CHAT).
- 2014-2015 Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy finalist
- 2014 Top-Three Paper, Graduate Research Forum, Temple University.
- 2013 Oliver H. M. Jordan Memorial Award awarded by the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission for People with Disabilities.
- 2013 Pre-doctoral Future Faculty First Summer Research Fellowship, Temple University.
- Rotary Foundation International Ambassadorial Scholar to the University of the Basque Country.
- Visiting Scholar, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Querétaro, Mexico.