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Melissa Villa-Nicholas

 Kingston, Rhode Island, United States
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, University of Rhode Island

Biography

Melissa Villa-Nicholas is Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island. Her work focuses on the Latinx histories and practices of information and technology, immigrant information rights, and critical approaches to information science. She is the author of Latinas on the Line: Invisible Labor in Telecommunications.

Scholarly beginnings

A research idea

Envisioning possible futures in the field of communication and media studies

Learn more about Prof. Villa-Nicholas’ journey

Selected readings

Villa-Nicholas, M (2023). Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Building an Industry from Immigrant Data. UC Press.

Villa-Nicholas, M. (2022). Latinas on the Line: Invisible Labor in Telecommunications. Rutgers Press.

Sweeney, M., and Villa-Nicholas, M. (2022). “Digitizing the Latina Information Worker.” American Quarterly

Villa-Nicholas, M. (2019) “Latinx Digital Memory: Identity Making in Real Time.” Social Media and Society

Villa-Nicholas, M (May 2018). “Terror by Telephone: Normative Anxieties around Obscene Calls in the 1960s.» First Monday. 23.5

Watch Prof. Villa-Nicholas present “Data Borders: How we are all Intimately Entwined in Detention and Deportation” at the Center for Latinx Digital Media

Listen to Prof. Villa-Nicholas’s insights about her professional journeys in El Café Latinx podcast