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Teresa 'Tess' Pierce
PhD

Associate Professor

Communication and Digital Media Studies

Faculty of Social Science and Humanities

Contact information

Bordessa Hall - Room 309
Downtown Oshawa
55 Bond Street East
Oshawa, ON

905.721.8668 ext. 3820

teresa.pierce@ontariotechu.ca


Background

Dr. Teresa 'Tess' Pierce is a founding faculty member and Associate Professor in the Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication from Colorado State University and her Master of Arts in Human Communication from the University of Denver. Her PhD from Clark University is in Women and Gender Studies. She received a prestigious Faculty Achievement Award from IBM, and Ontario Tech University honoured her with a Teaching Innovation Award.

The overarching theme for her research is how digital communication influences, and is influenced by, the rhetoric of everyday life. In 2016, the School of Communication at the University of Washington in Seattle awarded Dr. Pierce a Visiting Scholar appointment to inaugurate projects focused on the rhetoric of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). In these projects, Dr. Pierce questions gender disparity and claims this is a critical turning point for women and people of colour who are programmers, designers, academics, hackers and engineers to use their diversity and take their rightful places as valued colleagues and leaders in the STEM fields.

Education

  • PhD, Women's Studies Clark University

Courses taught

  • COMM 2110 Foundations of Communication Theory
  • COMM 3610 Persuasion and Rhetoric
  • COMM 3710 Intercultural Communication
  • COMM 3720 Communicating Diversity

Research and expertise

Dr. Pierce’s most recent research focuses on the cultural and gender implications of digital technology, specifically in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

Pierce, T. (2017) Resilience over Doom: Changing the Rhetoric of Climate Change Research.

Pierce, T. (2017). Cr/Hacking the (Gendered) System: iNfIl7R@ti0n, dI$rUp7i0N, and eNG@G3Ment: A Manifesto. An auto-ethnographic project supported by the University of Washington School of Communication and Ontario Tech.

Pierce, T. (2017). Sense-making and story-telling: A Review of Climate Change Research [Working Title]. An examination of 25 years of climate change research from the journal Public Understanding of Science that focuses on argumentation through storytelling.

Pierce. T. & Daniel, J. The Agincourt Algorithm. Reimagining the 15th-century battle to solve sorting obstacles in big data libraries. This paper introduces a new algorithm based on the famous battle to solve sorting obstacles in cascading data sets. 

Involvement

  • Selected publications

    Pierce, T & Sweet, D. (2014). Magik on the mounds: The (Re) enchanted spaces of House on the Rock. Arts and Social Sciences Journal 5 (1), doi: 10.4172/2151-6200.10000062.

    Pierce, T. (2010). Singing at the digital well: Weblogs as cyberfeminist sites of resistance. Feminist Formations 22 (3) 196-209, doi: 10.1353/ff.2010.0027.

    Pierce, T. (2009). Oh what a gendered web we weave: Deconstructing digital discourse in political web sites. In A. Bammé, G. Getzinger, & B. Wieser (Eds) Yearbook 2008 of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology, and Society. A publication of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society, Graz, Austria.

    Kapralos, W., Hogue, A., & Pierce, T. (2010). A serious game for collaborative intercultural business communication. Published Proceedings from the 13th Annual International Conference on Humans and Computers (HC-2010), December 2010, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan.

    Pierce, T. (2009). The Evolution of Human Communication: From Theory to Practice. Oshawa, Ontario: EtrePress, ISBN: 0981327303, 9780981327303.

    Pierce, T. & Daniel, J. (2009). Reclaiming the message: Applying message transformation to mediated communication. Published Proceedings from the 8th Annual IAS-STS Conference “Critical Issues in Science and Technology Studies” May 2009, Graz Austria ISBN # 978-3-9502678-1-5.

    Pierce, T. (2005). Blogging for life. The role of the cyberconduit In everyday narratives, cyberfeminism, and global social change. In J. Archibald, J. Emms, F. Grundy, J. Payne, & E. Turner (Eds.). The Gender Politics of ICT. (pp. 163-178). Middlesex, UK: Middlesex University Press.