I'm a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley's School of Information with a Designated Emphasis from the Berkeley Center for New Media. I am also a graduate researcher for the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California Humanities Research Institute. My research focuses on youth cultures, digital media practices, and the production of social inequalities. For my dissertation I'm producing an ethnography on the role of media technologies in the lives of a diverse group of 11- and 12-year-olds that attend a new public school in New York City that promotes "game-like learning" and being a "maker" of media and technology. At Berkeley I am advised by Paul Duguid and Jenna Burrell. At the Digital Media and Learning Hub I work under Mimi Ito. Previously, I was a researcher for The Digital Youth Project, a three year ethnographic study funded by the MacArthur Foundation, and in 2009 I was a co-author of our final report, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. The full report is available for free here and is also available as a book from MIT Press. Before beginning the PhD, I worked in interaction design, both as a masters student at the School of Information and in industry. I received a masters degree from UC Berkeley's School of Information in 2007 and a BA from Bowdoin College in 2000.

Please feel free to contact me: christo [at] sims [dot] berkeley [dot] edu