Mary L. Gray, Ph.D.

Mary L. Gray is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Associate Professor of Communication and Culture, with affiliations in American Studies, Anthropology, and the Gender Studies Department, at Indiana University. She draws on an interdisciplinary background in anthropology and critical media studies to study how people use digital and social media in everyday ways to shape their social identities and create spaces for themselves. Her most recent book, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America (NYU Press, 2009), examined how youth in rural parts of the United States fashioned “queer” senses of gender and sexual identity and the role that media -- particularly Internet access -- played in their lives and political work.