Joycelyn Wilson

My teaching and research operate at the intersection of Black media studies, hip hop scholarship, design theory, and emerging technologies. Across both, I ask how hip hop—understood as a cultural logic, design practice, and epistemology—can inform more equitable, imaginative, and human-centered approaches to media, technology, and creative production. My teaching philosophy is grounded in the belief that theory, creativity, and lived experience are mutually constitutive. I design courses that position students as critical makers—capable of analyzing cultural systems while also producing original work that responds to social, technological, and ethical challenges. Drawing from Black cultural traditions, particularly hip hop, I frame remix, improvisation, collaboration, and constraint as rigorous modes of inquiry and design. My courses emphasize project-based learning that integrates critical reading with creative experimentation. Students engage digital storytelling, interactive media, music and sound studies, archival research, and emerging technologies such as AI and immersive media. Through iterative projects, reflective writing, and collaborative critique, students learn to articulate both the technical and cultural stakes of their work. I prioritize inclusive pedagogy, clear scaffolding, and multiple entry points so that students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds—technical, artistic, and theoretical—can thrive. Mentorship is central to my teaching practice. I work closely with undergraduate and graduate students through studio courses, research labs, and vertically integrated project teams, supporting their development as scholars, designers, and creative practitioners. My goal is to help students translate intellectual curiosity into research, creative portfolios, and professional pathways in academia, industry, and the cultural sector.

My research advances a framework I describe as hip hop–inspired design, which treats hip hop not only as a cultural movement or musical genre, but as a methodological resource for design, innovation, and critical making. My scholarship brings together media studies, design research, cultural history, and autoethnography to examine how Black creative practices shape technological imagination and institutional systems—often without recognition. My current book project, Hacking Hip Hop: Design Remix Logic, develops this framework through a hybrid scholarly form that blends theory, cultural analysis, and personal narrative. In parallel, I lead digital and archival research initiatives that extend this work into public-facing, collaborative platforms. These projects explore how archives, interfaces, and emerging technologies can be designed to preserve cultural memory while enabling new forms of creativity and justice-oriented research. Across articles, invited talks, and collaborative grants, my research contributes to Black media studies, digital humanities, design studies, and music and sound studies. I am particularly interested in culturally grounded approaches to creative technologies that challenge extractive, exclusionary, and purely technical models of innovation. Teaching and research are deeply integrated in my work. The classroom serves as a laboratory for ideas that evolve into scholarly publications, digital tools, and public projects, while my research provides students with access to original frameworks, archives, and methods. Together, these practices reflect my commitment to expanding how we understand design, media, and Black creative intelligence in the 21st century.