Cassidy Pyle is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Nicole Ellison and Dr. Nazanin Andalibi. Broadly, her research examines how minoritized communities' engagements with social media platforms and, increasingly, algorithmic systems shape their holistic well-being, with particular attention to social, emotional, occupational, and educational dimensions of well-being. She is especially interested in how interactions with emerging technologies shape minoritized individuals' ability to equitably access and persist in higher education environments. 

Currently, she is working with first-generation, low-income students to understand how they use social media in the college application and selection processes and how social media can be better designed to meet their needs in this pivotal time. She is also working to understand how students perceive college admissions as an algorithmic system. Her dissertation work explores discussion of affirmative action college admissions policy on social media, including how these discussions shape intrapersonal, academic, and social outcomes (e.g., sense of belonging, vicarious trauma) for minoritized students. 

She has published at ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, Social Media + Society, and Current Opinion in Psychology, and has presented at the International Communication Association, CRA-WP IDEALS, CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women, the Human Computer Interaction Consortium, and the Northeast HCI regional meeting. Her work has been funded through the Rackham Merit Fellowship and the Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grant. She will be on the job market looking for tenure-track assistant professor roles or postdoctoral fellowships in the 2024-2025 academic year.

CV

Pronouns

she/her

Areas of interest

social media; algorithms; AI; human-centered and social computing; education; identity; stigma; well-being

Honors & Awards

Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grant - 2024 - 2025 
Special Recognition for Outstanding Contributions to DEI - ACM CSCW 2023 
Best Paper Award - ACM CHI 2021 
Rackham Merit Fellowship 2020 - 2025

Education

B.A., University of California, Santa Barbara -- Communication, Film & Media Studies, Feminist Studies