Ryan Coulling
Dr. Coulling's research examines how injustice is produced and sustained through individual action, cultural norms, and the institutions, technologies, and social environments that reproduce harm. His published scholarship on antifeminist digital cultures, gender-based violence, and institutional accountability exposes the cultural hierarchies embedded in digital and institutional life. His doctoral research on online misogynist communities showed how shared narratives, affective dynamics, and escalating practices of harm normalize gender-based violence, work he has extended through analyses of gendered public discourse and collaborative research on correctional institutions. Building on this foundation, his current research investigates how these same dynamics of harm are encoded and obscured within algorithmic systems, including digital ethnographies of online hate ecosystems and synthetic media, and studies of how algorithmic risk-assessment tools embed cultural assumptions that misidentify vulnerable populations.
In the classroom, Dr. Coulling wants students to leave seeing the world differently than when they walked in. His courses are built around assignments that ask students to turn a critical eye on their own lives, examining their own practices, social positions, assumptions, communities, and cultures rather than just reading about other people's. Assessments are designed to move students beyond memorizing concepts toward applying them to current events and emerging technologies, building the kind of analytical thinking that carries beyond the classroom. This commitment to accessibility and critical engagement runs through everything he teaches.