Christopher Ali, Ph.D.

Dr. Christopher Ali is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. He joined the department after nine years in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. in communication studies from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include media and telecommunications policy and regulation, broadband policy, critical political economy, critical geography, comparative media systems, qualitative research methods, media localism and local news. Ali's current research focuses on broadband policy and deployment in the United States, specifically in rural areas. His new book, Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021), examines the complicated terrain of rural broadband policy in the U.S. Farm Fresh unpacks the politics of broadband policy, asking why millions of rural Americans lack broadband access and why the federal government, and large providers, are not doing more to connect the unconnected.