Area of Research / Interest: Platform Studies, Hybrid Reality, Immersive Systems, Embodiment, Affect Theory, Presence, Phenomenology, Yoga Studies

Undergraduate Education Institution: St. Lawrence University

Undergraduate Major: English

Biography: Josh Potter is a doctoral candidate in Media and Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A former journalist, music critic, and editor at Metroland, an Upstate NY alternative newsweekly, he managed communications for EMPAC / The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at RPI before pursuing his current academic work. He is co-editor of the book Programming EMPAC Vol.2, and authored a recent chapter for the anthology Intimate Relations: Communicating (in) the Anthropocene. His dissertation "Practicing on the Platform: An Ethnography of Presence in the Zoom-Mediated Ashtanga Yoga 'Mysore Room'" tracks the efforts of one major transnational yoga lineage to migrate group practice onto the videoconferencing platform during the Covid-19 pandemic. A pilot study of this work was presented at the Presence 2020 conference. Email: pottej3@rpi.edu