Profile

Jennifer Jacobs Henderson holds a doctorate in Communication from the University of Washington.  She is a leading authority on developing strategies for researching media content and audiences.  In addition to conducting numerous studies on youth and media for the nonprofit advocacy group Children Now, she also has researched and spoken extensively on issues of gender and violence in video games and youth identification with gendered avatars.  Dr. Henderson teaches courses in media law and policy, media ethics, mass media history, and race, class and media. Her primary research interests focus on First Amendment legal history and how organizational litigants have shaped free expression in the United States.  Dr. Henderson has received several teaching and research awards including the Association for Journalism in Mass Communication’s Promising Professor Award and Trinity University’s Junior Faculty Award for Distinguished Teaching and Research.