For the 2009-2010 school year, I will be a lecturer in the School of Education at Berkeley, teaching courses about integrating technology into the classroom.

I recently finished my PhD in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I was advised by Professors Sara Kiesler and Susan Fussell (now faculty at Cornell University's Department of Communication). 

Contact

cristentorrey-at-berkeley-dot-edu
Graduate School of Education
4643 Tolman Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1670

Research

In general terms, my research explores the ways we identify ourselves to one another via computer-mediated communication tools. Some of the research issues I care about (and where identity creation is particularly salient, for both instrumental and emotional reasons) are ...

  • help-giving communication and recipients' reactions
  • debate/deliberative discourse online
  • trolling, flaming, and other forms of aggressive online communication
  • consensus building in informal groups
  • physical, procedural knowledge exchange in digital media

 

Bio

I grew up in California, where I pursued an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in the Humanities, including a program of study in Great Books. Before I went on to graduate school, I worked for eToys (you guessed it, a dot-com that sold toys) and spent some time teaching English in China. In my free time in Pittsburgh, I work on screen printing, fabric dying, and simple sewing projects.