Skip to main content
kish-zenia-2022-12.jpg

Zenia Kish
PhD

Assistant Professor

Communication and Digital Media Studies
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities

Dr. Kish's research explores unconventional forms of media across global contexts,including the mediation of philanthropy and agriculture, and makes connections between digital media studies, strategic communication, critical finance studies, American studies, food and agriculture, and development.

Languages
French, English

Contact expert

Zenia is available for:
  • Graduate student research supervision
  • Media inquiries
  • Partnerships

zenia.kish@ontariotechu.ca
905.721.5813 ext. 5813

Social media

Update this profile

  • BA - Philosophy, Literary Studies University of Toronto 2001
  • MA - Media Studies Western University 2007
  • PhD - American Studies University of New York 2015
Books

  • Food Instagram: Identity, Influence and Negotiation, co-edited with Emily Contois, University of Illinois Press, 2022
Articles and Book Chapters

  • "Farm Media" Special Issue and "Farm Media: An Introduction" co-edited and co-written with Benjamin Peters, New Media & Society 25, no. 8 (Aug 2023)
  • “Setting Data Free: The Politics of Open Data for Food and Agriculture,” with Madeleine Fairbairn, New Media & Society, 25, no. 8 (Aug 2023): 1935-1959
  • “Connected by a Blue Sweater: Ethical Narratives of Philanthrocapitalist Development” in The Entangled Legacies of Empire: Race,
  • Finance and Inequality, ed. Clea Bourne, Paul Gilbert, Max Haiven and Johnna Montgomerie, Manchester University Press (2023)
  • “Ukraine’s Farmed Forces: Defending Against Ill-Gotten Grains of War,” Oklahoma Humanities Magazine, Spring/Summer (April 2023)
  • “Pitching Agri-Food Tech: Performativity and Non-Disruptive Disruption in Silicon Valley,” with Madeleine Fairbairn and Julie Guthman, Journal of Cultural Economy 15, no. 5 (2022): 652-670
  • “‘A poverty of data’?: Exporting the digital revolution to smallholder farmers in the Global South,” The Nature of Data: Infrastructures, Environments, Politics, Jenny Goldstein and Eric Nost (eds.), University of Nebraska Press, 2022.
  • “From Seed to Feed: How Food Instagram Changed What and Why We Eat,” with Emily J.H. Contois, Food Instagram: Identity, Influence and Negotiation, co-edited with Emily Contois, University of Illinois Press, 2022
  • “Performing Impact in the COVID-19 Crisis” in Symposium, “Reparative Accumulation? Financial Risk and Investment Across Socio-Environmental Crises,” Dan Cohen, Sara Nelson, and Emily Rosenman (eds.), Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 5, no. 4 (December 2022): 2356-2382
  • States Magazine, Villa Albertine, Issue 1, “Will Instagram Replace Our Cookbooks?” with Dr. Emily Contois, “Food (Is) Culture” Special Issue (2022)
  • “Investing for Profit, Investing for Impact: Moral Performances in Agricultural Investment Projects,” with Madeleine Fairbairn, Environment and Planning A 50, no. 3 (May 2018): 569-588
  • “Bonded Life: Technologies of Racial Finance from Slave Insurance to Philanthrocapital,” with Justin Leroy, Cultural Studies 29, no. 5-6 (Sept 2015): 630-651
  • “‘My FEMA People’: Hip Hop as Disaster Recovery in the Katrina Diaspora,” American Quarterly 61, no. 3 (Sept 2009): 671-692

Best Edited Volume

Association for the Study of Food and Society January 1, 2023

Board Member, Journal of Environmental Media

Board Member, Communication and Race

Researcher, UC Agri-Food Technology Research Project

  • Strategic Communications for Influence: Rhetoric, Persuasion and Propaganda
  • Global Media, the Internet and International Relations
  • Media, Identity and Intercultural Communication