Brooke Foucault Welles, PhD
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS & AFFILIATIONS
Northeastern University
2023-present, Professor, Communication Studies
2025-present, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Arts Media and Design
2025 (summer), Interim Dean, College of Arts Media and Design
2022-2025, Associate Dean for Research, College of Arts, Media and Design
2021-2022, Interim Chair, Communication Studies
2018-present, Associate Professor, Communication Studies
2017-present, Director, Communication Media and Marginalization (CoMM) Lab
2012-2018, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies
2012-Present, Faculty Affiliate, NU-Lab for Texts, Maps, and Networks
2013-Present, Core Faculty, Network Science Institute
2015-present, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Advisory Board
Other Institutions
2020-present, External Faculty, Vermont Complex Systems Center
2018-2019, IDEA Fellow, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Northwestern University, Communication, 2012
M.S. Cornell University, Communication, 2003
B.S. Cornell University, Communication, 2001
SELECT PUBLICATIONS
(for the most up-to-date publication list, see my Google Scholar Profile)
Books
Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M. and Foucault Welles, B. (2020). #Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McGannon Book Award winner.
Foucault Welles, B. and González-Bailón, S., eds. (2020). Handbook of Networked Communication. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Articles
Gitomer, A., Atienza-Barthelemy, J., and Foucault Welles, B. (2026). Youth activism and (de)personalized remix on TikTok. Social Movement Studies, 25(2), 215-233. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2024.2415672
Smith, A.H., Amburg, I., Kumar, S., Welles, B.F., and Landry, N.S. (2026). A blue start: A large-scale pairwise and higher-order social network dataset. Scientific Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06920-1.
Allen, O.M., Zu, Y., Trujillo, M.Z., and Foucault Welles, B. (2026). From flowers to fascism? The cottagecore to tradwife pipeline on Tumblr. Social Media + Society, 12(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305125141392.
Westby, S., Radke, R.J., Riedl, C., Foucault Welles, B. (2024). How voice and helpfulness shape perceptions in human-agent teams. Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans. 2(2), 100101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2024.100101.
Gallagher, R., Doroshenko, L., Shugars, S., Lazer, D., Foucault Welles, B. (2021). Sustained Online Amplification of COVID-19 Elites in the United States. Social Media + Society, 7(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211024957
Ahn, S. J., Cripe, E. T., Foucault Welles, B., McGregor, S., Pearce, K. E., Usher, N., & Vitak, J. and Anonymous Co-Authors. (2021). Academic caregivers on organizational and community resilience in academia (Fuck individual resilience). Communication, Culture, and Critique. TCAB027, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcab027.
Gallagher, R. Young, J-G., and Foucault Welles, B. (2021). A Clarified Typology of Core-Periphery Structure in Networks. Science Advances, 7(12), 10.1126/sciadv.abc9800. https://DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc9800
Foucault Welles, B. (2020). On Writing, Surviving, and Thriving in Communication and Media Studies. International Journal of Communication. 14, 430-431, https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/13828.
Gallagher, R. J., Stowell, E., Parker, A. G., & Welles, B. F. (2019). Reclaiming Stigmatized Narratives: The Networked Disclosure Landscape of #MeToo. Proceedings of the 22th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW19), Nov 9-13, 2019, Austin, TX, USA, https://doi.org/10.1145/3359198. Best Paper Honorable Mention, frank*2021 prize finalist.
Jackson, S.J., Bailey, M., and Foucault Welles, B. (2017). #GirlsLikeUs: Trans advocacy and community building online. New Media and Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817709276.
Jackson, S. and Foucault Welles, B. (2016) #Ferguson is Everywhere: Initiators in Emerging Counterpublic Networks. Information, Communication and Society. 19(3), 397-418, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1106571.
Foucault Welles, B. and Meirelles, I. (2015). Visualizing Computational Social Science: The Multiple Lives of a Complex Image. Science Communication. 13(1), 35-48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547014556540.
Jackson, S. J. and Foucault Welles, B. (2015) Hijacking #myNYPD: Social media Dissent and Networked Publics. Journal of Communication. 65(6), 932-952, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12185.
Foucault Welles, B., Vashevko, A., Bennett, N., and Contractor, N. (2014) Dynamic Models of Communication in an Online Friendship Network. Communication Methods and Measures. 8(4), 223-243., https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2014.967843. AEJMC Theory and Methodology Article of the Year
Foucault Welles, B. (2014). On Minorities and Outliers: The Case for Making Big Data Small. Big Data & Society, 1(1), 2053951714540613, https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714540613.
NOTABLE AWARDS
2024 Network Science Society Outstanding Service Award
2021 McGannon Book Award, #HashtagActivism
2020 International Communication Association Applied/Public Policy Research Award
2017 Northeastern University Excellence in Teaching Award
SELECT GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2025 National Science Foundation, SCC-IRG Track 1: Amplifying Neighborhood Connectivity and Strength through Youth-Driven Civic Innovation
2022 National Science Foundation, PIPP Phase 1: PILOT: Predictive Intelligence for Limiting Outbreak Threat
2021 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Code Contributions for Women in Network Science
2020 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Social Data Fellowship, Reconsidering the Connections Between New Media, (In)equality, and Political Participation in the United States
2019 US Army Research Lab, Micro and Meso Signatures of Success in Human-Autonomy Teams
2018 National Science Foundation, CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: Catalyzing Youth Civic Engagement Through Innovations in Social Computing
2014 US Army Research Office Young Investigator Award: Measuring “Network Thinking” and its Impact on Individual and Team Performance