Bio Blog: Lara Heintz

I ended up in Media Studies as parts of a bizarre arrangement of intersections of interests and last minute half circle decisions. I grew up in Ohio to a Colombian mother and American father. I resisted the digital for a very long time, preferring typewriters and film and paper to the internet and digital media. My background is in international relations, french, and writing (as an undergrad), and before deciding to apply for graduate journalism programs (and deciding at the last minute that I had no desire to report stories), I worked jobs ranging from political profiling to writing to teaching in France for a year to making ice cream. I currently write and help with video projects for a site called Motherboard.

This juncture is the result of a strange amalgamation of broad experience, and a fascination with how the tactile materiality and infrastructure of our societies can work with the digital and the coded and how the mesh between these informs and constructs communities around the world. Media Studies has led me to become very interested in the way media both structures, reflects, and informs the way people build and perceive the connections that exist within their own communities, and how situated technologies can help to build these stories and visualize these networks in a collaborative environment.