Kate Koncilja 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, and then worked for the Chicago site of the U.S. POINTER study for nearly 3 years before returning to school. As a student in her first year, she plans to take an intersectional feminist approach as she studies media effects, attitudes, parasocial relationships, celebrity and fan culture, social movements, identity, and how all those things interact to create or combat the current countless inequities we see in society with the ultimate goal of learning how we can dismantle the structures that hold them in place. Some of her specific interests include the impacts of artists on their fanbases' attitudes and behaviors and the queer community's experiences of media and social media.