David Conrad-Pérez is research director at the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University. His work focuses on the intersection of journalism, social justice, community organizing, and media history. Before joining CMSI, he worked as a producer for WNYC’s On the Media and has reported stories for news outlets that include the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, and PRI’s The World. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication (2018), and he has forthcoming books with Oxford University Press (2025) and New York University Press (2026). His research has been published in several of the country’s leading academic journals on media and society. He has served as an invited judge for the Peabody Awards, in the documentary category, since 2018, and as a reviewer for the country’s top-rated academic journal on journalism, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, since 2014. His dissertation on the history of labor and charity influence in American journalism won the “top dissertation award” at the 2019 International Communication Association conference, the preeminent academic conference in the field of journalism and communication.