Melina is a Researcher at Knology in New York City. 

She was formerly a Postdoctoral Researcher at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge and holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. 

Melina’s Book…

My book (in revision with Oxford University Press) develops a cultural analysis of addiction through the lens of the ongoing U.S. opioid epidemic. In particular, this project is focused on unpacking the historical, cultural, and political economic conditions underlying the development of the field of pain management and the uptake of opioids as the best (if not only) solution for the problem of pain. My approach to the epidemic is interdisciplinary and multi-faceted – focusing on key domains such as media representation, pharmaceutical branding, the genealogy of pain medicine and addiction science, institutional analyses of U.S. drug regulation, and the critical analysis of the re-production of race and technologies of whiteness in drug policies, law, and rehabilitative technologies.

Research Areas of Interest

• Communication and media studies
• Science, technology, and society (STS)
• Public health disasters
• Substance use and addiction
• Critical discourse analysis
• Ethnography
• Branding