User:Haardstrasse/Kishonna Gray

READY FOR GRADING

Kishonna L. Gray
Dr. Kishonna L. Gray is an American communication and gender studies researcher based at the College of Arts and Science at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Gray is best known for her research on technology, gaming, race, and gender. As an expert in Women's and Communication Studies, Dr. Gray has been invited as a keynote speaker and has written several articles for publications such as the New York Times. She was the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Visiting Assistant Professor in Women’s & Gender Studies and Comparative Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has also been a faculty visitor at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and at Microsoft Research. Other scholars have cited, reviewed, and used Dr. Gray's work to understand and combat oppression of minorities in virtual spaces.

Academia
Dr. Kishonna L. Gray received her B.S. in Criminal Justice in 2005 and M.S. in Justice Studies in 2007 at Eastern Kentucky University. She received her PhD in Justice Studies from Arizona State University in 2011. She joined the Eastern Kentucky University faculty in 2011, the Arizona State University faculty in 2017, and her position at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2018. '''She also recently accepted a position at the University of Kentucky. '''

Research
Dr. Gray is known for her work in the areas of gender, race, and game studies. She is best known for her research on racism in video games and on intersectionality in technology. Dr. Gray is the author of Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live, Intersectional tech: Black users in digital gaming, and the co-editor of Feminism in Play and Woke Gaming. In her research, Dr. Gray analyzes the relationship between white hegemonic masculinity and Black identities. Dr. Gray focuses on racial dynamics specifically in streaming video games. Therefore, the oppression of intersecting marginalized identities, specifically those of Black women are at the core of Dr. Gray's research. Furthermore, Dr. Gray is the creator of the #citeherwork hashtag, created in 2015 to call attention to gender disparities in academic citation practices.

Impact
She has given lectures at Wesleyan University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Smith College, Indiana University, the Game Developers Conference, and the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was a keynote speaker at DIGRA, the Digital Games Research Association and at the Crime Media & Popular Culture Studies Conference. Her work has been covered numerous times in The New York Times and other popular publications. '''Dr. Gray is a research leader in intersectional feminism and white misogyny.  Her findings are picked up by other scholars to find solutions for biases in video games. Furthermore, Dr. Gray's work has found its way into cyber-activism and has been cited by the Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. The encyclopedia cites how minority identities evoke a perceived threat in majority identities.'''

Princeton Professor Dr. Wendy Belcher developed a test to analyze the choices of sources and named it "Gray Test" after Dr. Kishonna Gray.

Dr. Gray answers the correlation between online and offline identities and the translation of racism and misogyny from a gamer world into the real world.

David G. Schwartz, in the journal of the American Library Association CHOICE, identifies Dr. Gray's work as an interdisciplinary approach to understanding oppression in new technologies. 'Schwartz recommends Dr. Gray's book Intersectional tech: Black users in digital gaming'' for scholars and game designers, as well as a work that can empower those who feel marginalized.  Christopher A. Paul in the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication adds that the book is worth reading as Dr. Gray's research is helping us understand how the virtual (gaming) worlds we are creating affect real-world societies.'''