My name is pronounced LEE-uh WALL-ick.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I hold an MA in South Asian Studies and a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Michigan.

My research and teaching explore the racialization of minority and transnational communities in the age of digital and social media, with a focus on the South Asian American diaspora and its media activism.

I’ve written on South Asian Americans’ shifting position in US racial politics and the community’s responses to being historically misrepresented and underrepresented (“Diaspora & Digital Media” chapter), media representations of India and Indian American identities (article on MTV-Desi & Outsourced), and the creative labor that activists take on to build new racial justice-oriented solidarities (article on Sepia Mutiny, article on the South Asian American Digital Archive).

My current book project, Producing South Asian America: Diaspora, Race, and Digital Activism, examines the emergence of a new North American racial identity, and the media sites and labor that undergird it. For more, click here.

To learn more about me, visit the About page. To check out my CV and publications, click here.

Click here to look through some of my syllabi, teaching handouts, and resources for applying to and thriving in graduate school.

To check out Blown Away: A Fandom Podcast, a project produced by my Fall 2020 graduate seminar students for JAMS 855: Participatory Cultures in the Digital Era, click here.

To check out We Do Media Studies, the graduate student podcast project from Fall 2018 seminar, JAMS 860: Public Culture in the Digital Era, click here.

I tweet about academia and all sorts of other things as @liapold.