Faculty

Liat Berdugo is an artist and writer whose work investigates embodiment, labor, and militarization in relation to capitalism, technological utopianism, and the Middle East. Her work has been exhibited and screened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), MoMA PS1 (New York), Transmediale (Berlin), V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam), and The Wrong Biennale (online), among others. Her writing appears in Rhizome, Temporary Art Review, Real Life, Places, and The Institute for...

Allison Thorson is a Professor of Communication Studies, Chair of the Department of Communication Studies, Director of the Interdisciplinary Committee on Children and Youth, and Director of the Child and Youth Studies Minor at University of San Francisco. Her research focuses on how individuals and families communicatively manage and maintain individual/relational well-being in the context of — often deemed taboo — unexpected, hurtful, or non-normative events (e.g., family communication...

Kelsey Urgo earned her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before beginning her PhD program, she worked as a web developer at several institutions, including Wake Forest University and the Renaissance Computing Institute. Her research bridges the fields of information retrieval, human-computer interaction, and human-centered AI, exploring how search environments and generative AI tools can better support complex human tasks involving learning and creativity. She focuses on...

Michael Lawrence has taught courses for USF’s minor in User Experience and User Interface Design (UX/UI) and for the Honors College. His career spans academic and professional work at the intersection of language, culture, and design. He works full-time as a UX content designer, with over a decade of industry experience that includes freelance work and roles at Meta, Indeed, eBay, and Chime.

Michael’s academic background is in communication, rhetoric, and cultural studies. His teaching...

Richard Roche is a multi-disciplinary creative, small business owner, and educator. He has spent most of his career creating brands and websites for companies that are doing positive things for society. As a co-owner of a small studio that did "everything but advertising" he also has experience with packaging, books, photography, and copywriting. Aside from his creative output, his main passions are to empower underrepresented folks in the creative industry, and promote a more inclusive and...