Kate Koncilja (she/her) is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri. She received her B.A. in Psychology and Japanese from North Central College in 2020 and then worked for the U.S. POINTER study at its Chicago site for nearly 3 years before graduate school. Kate uses mixed methods to study several topics related to media, social media, political attitudes, and online discourses and communities, approaching her work with a critical lens interrogating systems of power and often informed by intersectional feminist and queer theories. Some of her core research interests include narratives, identity, parasocial relationships, fan communities, online social movements, and the social influence of celebrity/influencer culture. Recently, she has worked on projects involving photographic narratives of occupation in the contexts of Palestine and Ukraine, alternatives to the misogynistic narrative proliferating in the online Manosphere movement, and reactions to celebrity advocacy for overt political stances. 

Kate currently serves as a research assistant for a grant project internally funded through the College of Arts & Science’s Big Ideas Initiative. She also works as the assistant course director for COMM 2100: Media Communication in Society, which she taught previously for the past two years. Kate is a member of both the Media and Diversity Center (MDC) and the Political Communication Institute (PCI).