Morgan Ellithorpe (PhD, The Ohio State University, 2015) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication, which she joined in 2020. Her research centers on media psychology, particularly how media use influences human health. She is especially interested in the ways people engage with media actively and strategically to maximize their mental and physical well-being, as well as the times when this strategy fails and results in negative outcomes of media use. She is also interested in aspects of media use that influence enjoyment of media and involvement with media characters. Her research has been published in outlets such as Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Obesity, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Sex Research, Social Science and Medicine, and Media Psychology. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health.​