Jermaine Anthony Richards is a global communication scholar, multimedia producer, and strategist. Using critical, comparative, and historiographical communication methods, he examines how humanitarian actors engineer and deploy emerging media, information, and entertainment technologies to produce safety, security, and stability amid global crises, risks, emergencies, and disasters.
Richards is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. His dissertation – advised by Robeson Taj Frazier (Chair), Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, and Henry Guy Jenkins III – examines the contradictory aesthetics, ethics, and mechanics of social impact games that attempt to redress real manifestations of violence. He is also pursuing a certificate in Science and Technology Studies focused on Enlightenment rationalism and the emergence of evidence-based communication research methods (i.e., project, program, and portfolio measurement, evaluation, and examination).
Jermaine holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc in Global Media, Advertising Club of New York Presidential Scholar) and the University of Southern California (MA in Global Communication and MA in Communication, LSE-USC Global Media and Communications Research Associate Scholar). He earned his BS in Communications Technology (Digital Systems Engineering) and Studio Art as an AD Club Innovation, Advertising, and Media Scholar at York College, The City University of New York.
After beginning his career on New York City’s Madison Avenue, working across the advertising, media, and entertainment industries, Richards ascended to production roles at Wieden+Kennedy. There, he led production and co-designed the user interface and experience for the critically acclaimed game, Momo Pixel's Hair Nah: A Travel Game About a Black Woman Tired of People Touching Her Hair, which critiques racialized boundary invasion. Hair Nah has exhibited at the Smithsonian, Tate Modern, and the V&A; featured in Vogue and The New York Times; appears in over 15 books and journal articles across academic fields; and is taught at 50+ universities around the world – including MIT, Harvard, Stanford – for its contributions to cultural and educational movements surrounding the CROWN Act. Richards later freelanced as a media arts producer across London, Paris, and Tokyo.
He is currently the Senior Producer and Research Manager at USC Games' Radical Play Lab, led by TreaAndrea Russworm. At RPL, he leads research on the UI/UX design and analysis of global impact games and gaming technologies; develops critical educational frameworks for K-12 and undergraduate game-based learning; supports the production of student-led indie games; and develops, manages, and co-leads strategic industry media and entertainment partnerships in Los Angeles.
As a strategist, Richards served as a New America DIGI Fellow. He led a landscape analysis on digital transformation strategy in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar/Burma, and Viet Nam, supported by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Previous work focused on Indonesian government protests, post-humanitarian crises of debt accumulation in Small Island Developing States, and South-South development frameworks between Southeast Asia and CARICOM.
He also worked as a DIGI Associate in public finance, focusing on Sovereign Wealth Funds, at the Responsible Asset Allocator Initiative (RAAI), which mobilized capital from the world’s largest institutions toward responsible investing aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The RAAI Index offered the first comprehensive analysis of how the world’s largest long-term investors are developing strategies to manage environmental, social, and governance crises.
Jermaine writes and consults on emerging media and entertainment social-impact markets (i.e., games, gamification, gaming technologies, simulations, and virtual worlds) regarding issues of human difference; digital development strategy; platforms; and corporate social responsibility.