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.
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.