Overview
Jaime joined the Syracuse iSchool in 2022, after nearly a decade in academia at Texas Tech, West Virginia University, and University of Toronto. She earned a Ph.D. in Public Communication and Technology from Colorado State University, where she supported IARPA research projects into communication in immersive media environments. She serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Human-Machine Communication, Journal of Media Psychology, Communication Research Reports, and Technology, Mind, & Behavior. You can find her current CV here, and students interested in working on topics at the intersections of tech, morality, communication, and identity are invited to reach out by email.
Research
Jaime’s research is animated by questions about how humans have relationships with technologies—principally with robots, AI, digital agents, and avatars. She is particularly interested in how these relations do and don’t mirror the qualities of human social connections, as well as how those connections rely on meaning-making processes, social cognitions, and moral judgments. She also has interests in how technology plays a role in identification with digital and physical places, how machine companions might facilitate human flourishing, how lay publics understand complex technologies, and the role that media and narratives play in shaping those understandings. Much of this work is mixed-method, relying both on interpretive analysis of qualitative data (principally interviews, open surveys, artifactual texts) and statistical analysis of quantitative data (derived largely from experiment-based self-reports). Her current work on people’s judgments of social robot’s mental and moral capacities is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Teaching
- Human-Centered Design
- Social Media in the Organization
Personal
Jaime is a rescue-dog mom and an avid gamer (preferring MMOs and narrative indies), and loves to travel (with soft spots for Japan, Germany, and Belgium).
