Elizabeth Ellcessor is an Associate Professor in the department of Media Studies and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia . Her areas of interest include:

• Disability studies and critical access studies
• Histories of media technologies
• Pedagogy and universities as media environments
• Online celebrity and activism

Her new book, In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality (New York University Press, 2022), examines how media systems both warn us of emergencies and serve to define what those emergencies are–and aren’t–with profound consequences regarding race, disability, and gender.

She is also the author of Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation (New York University Press, 2016), the first cultural analysis of Web and digital media accessibility for people with disabilities. With Bill Kirkpatrick, she is editor of Disability Media Studies (New York University Press, 2017), a teachable collection of essays from scholars in media, disability, and literary studies.

Dr. Ellcessor’s research has been published in such journals as New Media & Society, the International Journal of Communication, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Cinema Journal, among others. She serves on the editorial boards of Cultural Studies, New Media & Society, and Television & New Media. Additionally, she has made her work available to broader audiences through writing for The Conversation and several podcast appearances.

Beginning in fall 2022, Dr. Ellcessor and Dr. Bo Ruberg will begin a term as Co-Editors of JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, the scholarly publication of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies.