James Cummings
Co-Director of Communication Research Center,
Associate Professor, Emerging Media Studies, COM
- Education
- Ph.D., Communication with Minor in Psychology, Stanford University
M.A., Telecommunications, Indiana University
B.A., Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Office
- B01A, 704 Commonwealth Ave
- cummingj@bu.edu
- Phone
- 617-358-0172
James Cummings, College of Communication associate professor of emerging media studies, examines the human-computer interaction and the psychological processing of media, with areas of focus including multitasking, emotion, motivation, and physiological responses. He cofounded the first media effects lab at Boston University, the Communication Research Center, introducing biometric tools and virtual reality workstations and developing the College of Communication’s research participant pool.
Cummings has written extensively in high-impact field publications, including the Journal of Communication, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Communication Research, and New Media & Society, as well as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Occasional Papers series. He was formerly a research fellow within the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering and the Institute for Health System Innovation & Policy. He is also a Visiting Scholar within Stanford University’s Human Screenome Project. His professional experience includes consultancy related to virtual reality, social gaming, UXR, and media-based behavior change interventions, as well as user experience research at Google X.
- Fellows
- Past Fellows
- Fields
- Hariri Faculty Affiliate