Hi, I’m Devo Probol — a Presidential Ph.D. Fellow, Fontaine Fellow, and Joint Doctoral Candidate in Communication and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m also part of the Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS), where I lead the Digital Activism & Data Justice (DADJ) research group, as well as fellowships with the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) and the Center for Media at Risk. Beyond research, I serve as Vice President of the Fontaine Society, Penn’s community for first-gen, low-income, and historically underrepresented PhD students.

A digital native and professional internet “lurker,” I study how financial markets have become arenas of digital activism. My dissertation uses digital ethnography to examine the “double movement” between financial journalism, which seeks to stabilize markets through narrative, and retail investors, who mobilize counter-narratives through memes, testimonials, connective and collective action. This work sits at the intersection of digital activism, economic sociology, financial journalism, and performance theory, and asks what happens when people use individual capital, culture, and media to contest capitalism itself.

Alongside this project, I pursue a broader line of research on social movement theory. I am especially interested in how movements build and sustain collective identities in digital environments where participation often appears diffuse or fragmented. Rather than evaluating movements through a binary of success or failure, I argue for a focus on endurance — the ways movements persist, adapt, and continue to shape publics and politics over time.

Before returning to academia, I worked in public service, which continues to ground my commitment to bridging academic and practitioner worlds. In addition to pursuing my PhD, I also serve as an Associate at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, where I support graduate teaching in Visual Communication, Communication Research and Insights, and Political Communication.

I hold M.A. degrees in Communication and Sociology from Penn, an M.S. in Strategic Communication from Columbia, and a B.A. in History and Religious Studies from Arizona State University, where I was honored with the Dean’s Medal Award.