Mel Monier
Nice to meet you!
My research explores the intersections between digital media, identity, and embodiment across three areas: digital labor, online dating, and self-representation online.
I specialize in mixed-methods approaches, incorporating interviews, focus groups, surveys, archival and historical data, community-engaged and experimental methods into my research.
Research
My work has appeared in many high-impact peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journals including Social Media + Society, Communication, Culture & Critique, New Media & Society, as well as a prize-winning publication in Transformative Works and Culture. I have also published more public-facing work in Flow, and Post45. I have received over $12,500 in grant funding from the University of Michigan to support my dissertation research, as well as an additional $4,700 in funding through the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s Anti-Racism Grant to support interdisciplinary research on online dating and identity.
I am a member of Oliver Haimson’s Community Research on Identity and Technology (CRIT) Lab and Apryl William’s Bodies, Identities, Intimacies, and Technologies (BIIT) Lab.
Teaching
In addition to research, I am extremely passionate about teaching. I am currently a Case Writer and Graduate Student Facilitator at the Center for Socially Engaged Engineering and Design (C-SED). At C-SED, I facilitate technical design skills sessions and case studies based on the Socially Engaged Design Model to illuminate the ways that the technical and social are deeply intertwined. I also have worked on redeveloping case studies to include more primary sources and diverse stakeholder perspectives
As an instructor, I provide opportunities for students to practice reading and writing, center students’ identities and lived experiences in the classroom, and provide space for students to engaging in conversation, learning with and from each other. I have a deep commitment to teaching and have continually sought out opportunities to teach a variety of classes to further strengthen my skills. I have been recognized by the University of Michigan for my commitment to teaching, receiving an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award in 2025.
I have taught courses across a variety of disciplines and modalities, as Instructor of Record for ENGL 125 (“Digital Culture and Discourse,” a First-Year Writing Requirement), COMM 306 (“Talking Trash”: Studying Popular Media and Its Audiences), and have been a Lead Graduate Student Instructor for COMM 101 (The Media Past and Present) and Graduate Student Instructor for COMM 355 (“Critical Internet,” an Upper-Level Writing Requirement).
Dissertation
My MA thesis focused on Black beauty vloggers on YouTube, analyzing the intersections of race and digital feminized and aspirational labor.
My dissertation project is an exploration of media representations of trans masculine pregnancy over the last 25 years. I engage with media representations of trans masculine pregnancy including archival news media, blog posts and online forums, social media posts, popular press, movies, and TV. Using images of pregnant trans masculine bodies situated in their social, cultural, and political contexts, I explore how these representations have shaped how the American public engages with and understands transness, trans masculinity, and trans masculine pregnancy.
My first chapter is a case study of the news media discourse around Thomas Beatie’s pregnancy after he published an op-ed in The Advocate announcing his pregnancy in 2008. I analyzed 120 news articles about Beatie and his pregnancy that depict his experience as a carnivalesque sideshow or adopt a heteronormative and transnormative narrative to assert his identity as a man and a father. I explore the ways that Beatie’s story was positioned in support of or in opposition to hegemonic ideologies of masculinity and fatherhood and American family values. In addition, I explore the ways that Beatie’s body became subject to public scrutiny to prove (or disprove) his masculinity.
My second chapter builds upon the themes of in/visibility, centering qualitative semi-structured virtual interviews with trans masculine participants who have carried and/or birthed children. Through these conversations, I illuminate the ways that trans masculine folks used online spaces for information sharing, community building, and self-representation during their pregnancy journeys. I also discuss the ways that participants engaged with limited media representations of trans masculinity and trans masculine pregnancy in the media. I argue that images of trans masculinity and trans masculine pregnancy are co-constructed by the digital spaces in which they circulate.
My third chapter extends upon these findings to uncover how news media shapes cultural beliefs and attitudes surrounding trans masculine identity and pregnancy. I built an experimental survey providing valuable insight into the American public’s attitudes towards reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, gender-inclusive language, and queer and trans rights, topics that have been heavily debated in the media, especially the news, during the 25-year time period my dissertation covers.
To understand why trans masculine pregnancy is a topic that hardly garners any media attention, I contend that we must first understand why trans masculinity is broadly underrepresented. In looking at and for the pregnant trans masculine body across space and time, I am also tracing the ways that pregnancy as a highly embodied and gendered experience is one of the few ways that the trans masculine body is made visible.