Isabella Gomez-O'Keefe (2023)

Isabella Gomez-O’Keefe is a PhD Student in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and Stamps Scholar at Queens’ College, supervised by Dr. Hazem Kandil. She has previously earned an MPhil in Political Sociology at the University of Cambridge, a B.A. in International Affairs & Security Studies from the University of Georgia, and completed two visiting terms at Keble College at the University of Oxford studying International Conflict. She has also previously worked for the Centre for Information Resilience researching identity-based disinformation and hate speech, as well as the U.S. State Department researching Middle Eastern politics.

Isabella conducts interdisciplinary research in the fields of sociology, political communication, and social psychology, with a focus on American politics. Her current project focuses on the socio-cognitive framing of ‘enemy images’ in mainstream political discourse on social media during moments of domestic political contention, specifically looking at U.S. Elections and Social Movements in the last five years. Her research builds on her past projects researching ‘enemy images’ and socio-cognitive framing, including: right-wing rhetoric on Youtube and the U.S. Capitol Insurrection, the pre-2020 Election communication tactics of former President Donald Trump on Twitter, and the discursive radicalization techniques used by the Islamic State in the magazine Dabiq.

Thesis

America’s Enemies - An Analysis of Contemporary Enemy Images in the Mainstream Media from the 2020 BLM Protests to the 2024 Presidential Election

Supervisor

Professor Hazem Kandil

Awards

• Stamps Scholarship, Queens' College Cambridge (Current)
• Zell B. Miller Scholarship (2017-2021)
• Hope Scholarship (2017-2021)