Kishonna L. Gray is an American communication and gender studies researcher based at the

University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences The College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) is the liberal arts and sciences unit of the University of Kentucky, located in Lexington, Kentucky. It is primarily divided between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and offers more ...

. Gray is best known for her research on technology, gaming, race, and gender. As an expert in

Women's A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...

and

Communication Studies Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in differen ...

, she has written several articles for publications such as the '' New York Times''. In the academic year 2016–2017, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hosted by the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and the MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing Program. She has also been a faculty visitor at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and at

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

Education

Kishonna L. Gray received her B.S. in Criminal Justice in 2005 and M.S. in Justice Studies in 2007 at Eastern Kentucky University. She received her PhD in Justice Studies from

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...

in 2011. She joined the Eastern Kentucky University faculty in 2011, the

faculty in 2017, and her position at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2018. She also accepted a position at the University of Kentucky.

Research

Gray is known for her work in the areas of gender, race, and game studies. She is best known for her research on racism in video games and on intersectionality in technology. She has published multiple books: ''Race, Gender, & Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins''; ''Intersectional Tech: Black users in digital gaming'', and ''Black Cyberfeminism or How Intersectionality Went Viral'' (under contract). In her research, she analyzes the relationship between white hegemonic masculinity and Black identities. Gray focuses on racial dynamics specifically in streaming video games. Therefore, the oppression of intersecting marginalized identities, specifically those of Black women are at the core of her research. Gray is the creator of the #citeherwork hashtag, created in 2015 to call attention to gender disparities in academic citation practices.

Impact

Her work has been covered numerous times in the New York Times and in other publications. Gray is a research leader in

intersectional feminism Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...

and white misogyny. Her findings are picked up by other scholars to find solutions for biases in video games. Her work has found its way into cyber-activism and has been cited by the ''Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice.'' The encyclopedia cites how minority identities evoke a perceived threat in majority identities. Princeton Professor Wendy Belcher developed a test to analyze the choices of sources and named it "Gray Test" after Kishonna Gray. She answers the correlation between online and offline identities and the translation of racism and misogyny from a gamer world into the real world. David G. Schwartz, in the journal of the American Library Association CHOICE, identifies Gray's book, ''Intersectional tech: Black users in digital gaming'' as an interdisciplinary approach to understanding oppression in new technologies. Schwartz recommends the book for scholars and game designers, as well as a work that can empower those who feel marginalized. Christopher A. Paul in the journal ''Critical Studies in Media Communication'' adds that her research is helping us understand how the virtual (gaming) worlds we are creating affect real-world societies. Her work informs Game Design, with articles such as the Electronic Book Review's ''How to Design Games that Promote Racial Equity'', cowritten with Lai-Tze Fan, and Aynur Kadir.

Selected works

* Gray, K. L. (2012). Intersecting oppressions and online communities: Examining the experiences of women of color in Xbox Live. Information, Communication & Society, 15(3), 411-428. * Gray, K. L. (2012). Deviant bodies, stigmatized identities, and racist acts: Examining the experiences of African-American gamers in Xbox Live. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 18(4), 261-276. * Gray, K. L., & Leonard, D. J. (Eds.). (2018). Woke gaming: Digital challenges to oppression and social injustice. University of Washington Press. * Gray, K. L. (2020). Black Gamers’ Resistance. Race and Media: Critical Approaches, 241. * Gray, K. L. (2020). Intersectional Tech: Black users in digital gaming. LSU Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gray, Kishonna Living people Arizona State University alumni 21st-century American scientists 21st-century American women scientists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American scientists Eastern Kentucky University alumni