Gordon Coonfield

Gordon Coonfield received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Technology, and Culture from Michigan Tech in 2003. He is Associate Professor of Communication at Villanova University, where he teaches about visual and digital media and how to use them to study urban culture. In 2001, he began researching visual culture and collective memory. It started with the role of photojournalism in representing the events of September 11 and followed the ways remembrance of those events was collectively shaped through peoples’ everyday activities in ordinary places.

Since moving to the Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia, PA, in 2015, his research has focused on collective memory and media in everyday urban life. This research involves locating, photographing, mapping, and discovering the stories behind the scores of memorials around Kensington. These "grassroot" or "vernacular" memorials take many forms--shrines, ghost bikes, murals--but all are created by ordinary people to publicly mourn their loved ones who have died tragic, often violent deaths. *Kensington Remembers* is a publicly available, web-based project that tells some of those stories.