Research

Areas of Study:

  • Critical communication and cultural studies
  • Critical race public scholarship
  • Community-engaged and public interest research
  • Rhetoric of resistances & social movements
  • Digital networks and commons
  • Activist art
  • Liberatory education

My scholarship, pedagogy, and community work are rooted by my commitments to decolonial collective liberation. As a communication scholar, these commitments lead me towards questions about collective care and revolutionary rhetorics—how to practice new worlds into being. Through critical methodologies, I study discourses and practices of social movements, particularly regarding race and movement. I research, write, teach, and co-create strategies for cultural shifts in ways that consistently interrogate forces of oppression and open possibilities for change.

University of Washington’s Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity

As a research assistant with Dr. Ralina Joseph’s Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE), I’ve supported the Interrupting Privilege project and related research and programs. The CCDE strives to be a space where our community of students, faculty, staff, and alumni gathers to promote greater equity. Through research collaborations, networking opportunities, action-oriented classes, mentorship programs, and community events, we engage in dialogue to think critically about race and its intersections, to interrupt privilege, and ultimately to change the structures of power around us.

Learn more about CCDE projects:

The CCDE’s Interrupting Privilege exhibit at the Northwest African American Museum
The CCDE’s Interrupting Privilege exhibit at the Northwest African American Museum
Speaking at a November 2023 Radical Listening event
Members of the CCDE research team at a November 2023 Radical Listening event
Presenting on the Interrupting Privilege project at the October 2023 Imagining America Annual Gathering

Recent Publications

Feng, J. (2025). The Genesis of Our Freedom: Constituting a queer of color commons through public art. Communication and Race, 2(1), 92–104. https://doi-org./10.1080/28346955.2025.2514271

Feng, J. and Perez, A. (2025). “Relief for All of Us or Relief for None of Us.” In Matthews, S. and Zukowska, M. (Eds.), Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements. The New Press.

Research Reports

Wage Replacement for Washington Excluded Workers (2025)

This report summarizes the outcomes of the Washington Excluded Workers Benefits Fund (WEWBF), a pioneering 10-week pilot program dedicated to providing financial support and conducting qualitative research among Washington’s undocumented workers. Managed by Scholar Fund and funded by the Washington Dream Coalition, this initiative offers a crucial lifeline to those ineligible for unemployment benefits due to their immigration status. The goal is to collect impactful research-based data and stories to advocate for a comprehensive social safety net in Washington State, ensuring that no worker stands alone.

Community Provides: Undocumented Immigrants during the COVID-19 Pandemic (December 2021)

This report showcases the case of the Washington Dream Coalition (WDC)’s grassroots relief fund, analyzing data and stories from over 78,000 undocumented immigrants who applied to state relief funds. I managed the research team, funded $100,000 by Communities for Opportunity.

Our Rising Voices: A Call to Action to Support Emergent Multilingual Students (December 2020)

This report by OneAmerica and the Community Center for Education Results, funded by the Road Map Project, includes data, research, and stories that reveal the inadequacies of education systems in supporting “emergent multilingual” students and families. It shares intentional strategies that can drive sweeping yet specific systemic shifts to undo inequitable policies and practices.

Let Us Succeed: Student College & Career Aspirations (May 2019)

This report by the Community Center for Education Results, funded by the Road Map Project, summarizes a mixed-methods research project highlighting the perspectives of 7,000+ high schoolers through survey and listening session data.

Celebrating the Power of Bilingualism: Community Organizing and Advocacy for English Learner and Multilingual Student Success in South King County and Washington State 

This report, produced by OneAmerica, outlines the demographics, community organizing wins, and future policy solutions that honor multilingualism in our communities.

Research-in-Progress

These are research projects that are in review at academic journals, in submission, or near submission (paper names slightly changed for the purposes of blind review).

  • Passport Art from Liminal Polities
  • Movement Art and Mobile Commoning as Resistance against Border Imperialism
  • Activist Commons and Resistant Discourse in Counterpublics
  • Asian Representations, Indigenous Erasure, and Settler Colonial Entanglements in Media Discourse
  • International feminisms and digital storytelling (with Dr. Bochra Laghssais)
  • Fugitive Pedagogies in the University