jlyons@sju.edu
@jmikelyons

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Digital Media at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. I teach courses in digital media ethics and civic and community media.

My teaching and writing investigates and analyzes the intersection of civic engagement and digital media, particularly as they relate to social justice issues.

I am currently working on The Redemption Project, a multimedia documentary project that tells the stories of “juvenile lifers,” people who are serving life without parole for crimes they were convicted of when they were teenagers. Pennsylvania currently has more juvenile lifers – about 500 – than any state in the country. There are currently some than 2,500 juvenile lifers in the United States. In every other country in the world combined there are 0.

The collaborative project combines methods and ideas from oral history, public sphere and communication activism to create a site aimed at disrupting typical media narratives of incarceration.

My BA is from Temple University and my Ph.D. is from Indiana University.

I was a reporter and editor for The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse and newspapers in the former Soviet Union, the British West Indies, Alaska and Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

I live in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Spruce Hill. My wife Julija and I founded the website West Philly Local, which covers our neighborhood and others in West Philly.