Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow 2019-2021
Jhessica Reia holds a PhD and an MA in Communication Studies from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and a BA in Public Policy from the University of Sao Paulo. Prior to coming to McGill, Reia was a Project Manager and Lecturer at the Center for Technology and Society at FGV Law School from 2011 to 2019. There, Reia worked with research and advocacy at the intersection of Law, Media & Communication and Science and Technology Studies. Reia is a former Visiting Researcher at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, and have been working as an access to knowledge and free culture activist since 2008. Reia's work appears in Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education (The MIT Press), Mapping Digital Media Brazil (OSF/FGV), and Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night (Palgrave Macmillan). Their dissertation on the regulation of street performance in Rio and Montreal was nominated for Best Dissertation in Communication Studies in Brazil and received an honourable mention from the UCF/IAMCR Urban Communication Research Grant in 2016. At McGill, Reia will work with Professor Will Straw in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies on a research project about the present-day conflicts over nightlife and cultural policy in four cities in the Americas: Montreal, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and New York.