Hi there, welcome to my homepage! I'm Abby QIN Youran (秦悠然). My parents picked my Chinese name "悠 (yōu) 然 (rán)" (carefree) from a hermit's poem, hoping I could free myself from normative expectations and live an authentic life. I have always been striving for that.

I am currently a Ph.D. student in Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I also hold two doctoral minors in Cartography & Geographical Information Systems and Sociology respectively. 

I study political communication in the twofold context of social networks and physical surroundings, leveraging methodologies from network sciences and geographic information systems to put political processes into place.

Apart from research, I co-run a Computational Communication Cooperative with Wil M. Dubree, teach communication theories, research methods, and strategic communication, and cook for people I care about ❤️