Danyel Ferrari

Danyel Ferrari’s research explores the relationship between media discourse, cultural institutions, and public feeling in the digital age. She uses critical discourse analysis, visual cultural analysis, and qualitative methods to examine mediated narratives of crisis and how emotions are not only represented but increasingly measured and operationalized, with significant impacts on cultural institutions. With a background in gender studies, migration, and art history and visual culture, Ferrari investigates how affect, representation, and power circulate across media systems and shape the evolving social roles of art and communication. Her teaching draws on this interdisciplinary approach to connect media history, visual storytelling, and cultural politics.

She will defend her Ph.D. dissertation in media studies in the fall of 2025 at Rutgers University, where she has taught undergraduate courses at SC&I since 2021. She has published book chapters on migration and memorial art, most recently in "Making Routes: Mobility and Politics of Migration in the Global South" (2024), and has presented her research at international conferences including the Cultural Studies Association, the International Communication Association, and the Union for Democratic Communications. Following graduation, she plans to expand her research on media discourse, cultural institutions, and the operationalization of emotion in digital life, with the goal of bridging scholarship and teaching.