Congratulations to Brian Weeks, who has accepted a position in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan.  He will also have an appointment in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. Brian earned his PhD from the School of Communication at Ohio State University last year, and has spent the past year working with Homero Gil de Zúñiga at the University of Vienna.  Brian will be joining a terrific community of scholars, and will be continuing his work on affect and misperceptions.

Congratulations to Dustin Carnahan on successfully defending his dissertation today. Dustin has done some important work exploring the influence of motivated reasoning on selective exposure and its consequences. I look forward to seeing the work reach a wider audience. Next, it’s off to Michigan State’s Department of Communication.

Two students that I have worked with over the past few years have secured tenure-track positions.  Jason Peifer will be an Assistant Professor of Journalism in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington starting in the Fall.  Jason has a professional background in journalism, and is particularly interested in political entertainment.  Dustin Carnahan will be an Assistant Professor of Communication in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State University. Dustin shares my interest in politically motivated selective exposure, with an emphasis on the factors that shape when and how this behavior is enacted, and what its consequences are.  Congratulations to both of them on reaching the next stage of their careers.

Congratulations to my advisee, Brian Weeks, who successfully defended his dissertation this month.  Now he’s off to the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna in Austria.