Research Areas: Critical Data Studies, Data Justice, Platform Studies, Digital Humanities, Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence, Feminist and Queer Theory, Latinx Diaspora Studies

Supervisor: Dr. Andrea Zeffiro

Research Summary: Alexis-Carlota Cochrane (she/they) is a PhD Candidate (ABD) and Sessional Instructor in the Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario where she also pursues a Graduate Diploma in Gender and Social Justice.

Her dissertation project investigates how women of colour experience disproportionate harm in digital spaces and examines the queer, resistive strategies they use to reclaim agency, foster and sustain digital counterpublics, and disrupt white-centric, heteropatriarchal technocultures.

Some of Alexis-Carlota’s research can be found in Rivista di Digital Politics, Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities (IDEAH), and in an edited collection entitled “You’re Muted”: Performance, Precarity, and the Logic of Zoom, published by Bloomsbury.

Research Areas: feminist media studies; networked parenting; social media research ethics

Supervisor: Dr. Faiza Hirji

Dissertation Title: Parts & Labours – North American Online Mothering in COVID-19: Virtual Lactation, Misinformation, Mad Moms & Momfluencers

Research Summary: In 2015, the phrase “the momification of the Internet” (Dewey) pointed to the widespread use of
online social networking sites (SNSs) by parents engaged in acts of mothering, which I understand as
“gender-free work” that “does not require a particular sexual commitment” (Ruddick xii). In 2025, I
assert that “momification” has only amplified and signals to pervasive online trends such as antivaccination
misinformation, declines in parental mental health, and the increasing complexities of both
paid and unpaid labour. My doctoral project investigates online mothering in North America under the
conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermaths, which have led to a marked retrograde in employment gains for
working mothers especially (Roberts et al.; Taub), and impacted their mental health and access to
various supports (Botz and Cohen). Notably, parents’ experiences vary widely based on individual
intersectional (Crenshaw) subjectivities (i.e., race, class, gender, ability, neurodiversity).