Our Team
Meet the masterminds behind FTT!
Dr. Shana MacDonald
Associate Professor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo
Dr. Shana MacDonald is O’Donovan Chair of Communication Across the Curriculum and Associate Professor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her interdisciplinary research examines feminist, queer, and anti-racist media activisms within social and digital media, memes, popular culture, cinema, and contemporary art. Dr. MacDonald is co-director of the Digital Feminist Network of Canada (digfemnet.org) and co-runs the online archive and research collective Feminist Think Tank (Instagram: @aesthetic.resistance). She is a series editor for Ohio State University Press’s Digital Feminist Resistance book series. MacDonald has published in Feminist Media Studies (2020), Camera Obscura (2022), MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture (2023), and is lead editor of Networked Feminisms: Digital Practices and Activist Assemblies (Lexington Books 2022).
Dr. Brianna I. Wiens
Assistant Professor in English Language & Literature at the University of Waterloo
Brianna I. Wiens is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Rhetoric in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her work brings together intersectional feminism, feminist media studies, and critical affect studies to examine the embodied methodologies, rhetorics, and politics of digital culture in order to explore how people use media in critical and creative ways to foster community and speak back to power. Her current work investigates the visual culture and rhetorical vernaculars of misogyny, mixed-race representation, and misinformation amid the rise of technology-facilitated violence. She is Co-Director of the research collective Feminist Think Tank (www.feminist-think-tank.com) and the recently established Digital Feminist Network of Canada (https://digfemnet.org/), as well as Co-Editor of The Ohio State University Press book series Digital Media, Feminist Resistance (https://ohiostatepress.org/books/series/dmfr.html).
The Research Assistants
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Anna McWebb
Anna McWebb is a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her research investigates the ways in which queer and intersectional feminist political resistance emerges through visual rhetorical discourse within meme (sub)cultures on the Internet. Alongside her studies, she is in the role of Managing Editor for (Un)Disturbed: A Journal of Feminist Voices, and works as a research assistant for the Digital Feminist Network, and the Connect, Create, Customize: Collaborative Toolkit Building for Campus Trust And Safety project through the Feminist Think Tank, all of which are lead by Dr. Brianna I Wiens and Dr. Shana MacDonald.
Amaya Kodituwakku
Amaya Kodituwakku (they/them) is an incoming Queen's University MPhil English student, with a BA in English Literature and Rhetoric (Legal Studies minor) from the University of Waterloo. Their research focuses on how transnational feminists rhetorically navigate state gender-based and sexual violence, particularly during civil wartime and unrest in Sri Lanka and North America. Amaya is currently an RA on Dr. Brianna Wiens's SSHRC-funded project, Reactionary Rhetorics: Mapping Digitally Mediated Rhetorics of Gendered Violence, and on Dr. Shana MacDonald's DCCP-funded project, From Front Lines to Policy: Engaging Influencers to Counter Gender-Based Hate and Extremism in Canada.
Cassandra Lalonde
Cassandra Lalonde is a third-year History student and English literature minor at the University of Waterloo. She is working under Dr. Shana Macdonald as a research assistant, focusing on organizing and collecting data. Cassandra is interested in studying and documenting the rise of the manosphere on social media, its influence on young minds, and its impact on intersecting marginalized identities.
Spencer Kim
Spencer Kim (she/they) is a third-year Liberal Studies major at the University of Waterloo and is working part-time as a research assistant for Dr. Shana MacDonald. Spencer is currently in her “trying everything” era, but mostly helps with media design and day-to-day organization tasks. Spencer’s research interests focus on video games as an ever-evolving, unique art form and medium and the ways they can be used to lift voices and tell stories from creators and players of underrepresented groups.
Jacqueline Cardoso
Jacqueline Cardoso (she/her) earned her BA in English Literature and Rhetoric from the University of Waterloo, and will be starting her MA in Literatures of Modernity at TMU in Fall 2026. Her research interests lie in science and technology studies, rhetoric, publishing and popular culture, with a strong focus on the ethical questions and issues affecting these fields. Jacqueline is an RA for Shana Macdonald and she is the Assistant Managing Editor of Loose Threads Press, a new Kitchener-based literary arts press specializing in limited run editions of experimental poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
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Nitya Choudhary
Nitya Choudhary (she/her) is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo, majoring in Sociology with a minor in History. She is working as a research assistant under Dr. Shana MacDonald, supporting literature reviews and organizing data. Her research interests include feminist history, prisoners' rights and carceral transparency, as well as understanding the rise of gender-based violence in online spaces.