Kris Vera-Phillips is a media scholar and journalist. She works as a faculty associate at the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she teaches news producing and multimedia skills classes. She is also a Ph.D. candidate. Her research agenda explores race, identity, and representation in media. Her research has covered issues in journalism and popular culture. She looked at the erasure of Filipino nurses from Grey’s Anatomy, questioned the precarious nature of equity and right to life for android officers in Star Trek, and investigated the use of journalistic objectivity in news media when it leaves behind communities of color and marginalized voices.
Before academia, Kris worked as an Emmy Award-winning journalist with more than 14 years of experience producing news shows and special projects. Most recently, she worked as a multimedia producer for Capital Public Radio and senior news producer for KPBS San Diego. She served two terms as the Vice President of Journalism Programs for the Asian American Journalists Association. She mentors student journalists with AAJA Voices and PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs.
Educator
Arizona State University – Faculty Associate
Chandler-Gilbert Community College – Adjunct Professor
Butler University – Guest Lecturer
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign – Guest Lecturer
St. Petersburg State University, Russia – Guest Lecturer
Publications
Vera-Phillips, K. (2022). Southwest, Filipina/x/o Americans in the. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies (Vol. 2, pp. 898-900). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071828960
Estrada, E., Vera-Phillips, K., Flores-Gonzales, N., Romanello, B., Pasco, M., & Roque, A. (2024). “Symbolic Appropriation of the U.S. Flag: Findings from a Photovoice Study.” American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764224128426
Kwon, H., Vera-Phillips, K., Moon, Y. E., Shao, C., & Xu, W. W. (2024). Credible, but Not for Me: Immigrant Folk Theories of News Trust in Chinese, Korean, and Filipino Communities in the US. Journalism Practice, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2024.2340526
Media Coverage
Brodie, M. (2024, Oct. 31) How do young Americans see themselves as Americans? ASU researchers try to find out. KJZZ Phoenix. 91.5 FM interview
Peck, G. (2023, Sept. 23) Nurturing diversity in newsrooms and the c-suite. AAJA is on a quest to support and elevate Asian American leaders in news media. Editor & Publisher
ASU Graduate College. Learning how to teach the next generation of journalists
