Biography

Giovanna (Giovi) Roz is the Associate Director of Media Services in the Office of Information Technology. She holds a Laurea in Classics from Università degli Studi di Torino and a Master in Technology and Multimedia Communication (MATEC) from COREP. She completed her MA requirements for a Ph.D. in Italian Studies at Brown University, with a focus on language pedagogy.

She arrived at Brown University in 1997 as a Visiting Scholar in Medieval Italian and Digital Humanities and in 1998 started working full time at the Scholarly Technology Group as a Research Analyst. She received her training in SGML and TEI from the Women Writers Project and collaborated with professor Massimo Riva on Decamen Web, Pico Project and more recently on the Garibaldi and Risorgimento Project. 

In 2002 she transferred to the newly formed Instructional Technology Group and started working there as an Instructional Technology Projects Coordinator. She was responsible for the Student Technology Assistant Program and managed student workers working on faculty projects.

In 2009 she was offered a staff management position within Academic Technology and started the Media Production Group and the Media Production Assistants program. In 2014 Media Production was merged with AV Technology as part of one Media Services; for a few years Giovi also managed the Multimedia Labs. In 2020 Giovi became the Assistant Director and in July 2021 the Associate Director of Media Services. She currently manages 5 staff who lead the different unit areas and multiple contractors and student workers. The group supports faculty and students with media technology in and outside of the classroom, handles media support for events and produces academic videos for faculty and campus partners, such as the University Library.

Outside of work, Giovi is very interested in teaching methodologies and in language acquisition; she attended the Sheridan Center Teaching Seminar workshop series graduating as a Teaching Consultant in 2014. She volunteered as a Teaching Consultant and Teaching Workshop Facilitator (2015-2018). In 2019 she assisted in teaching a course on Italian food and memory.

At work, in addition to staff and logistics management, Giovi’s main interest is in accessibility and specifically as it pertains to teaching and learning activities, to content creation and to classroom spaces. She has worked on closed captioning for campus videos, on setting up Remote CART, in collaboration with Student and Employee Accessibility Services (SEAS) - for which she received the 2018 SEAS Facilitator Award - and is more recently collaborating with her Media Services colleagues on defining media accessibility support services. Since 2021 Media Services works in conjunction with Student Accessibility Services (SAS), the campus ADA / 504 Coordinator, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity and Event Strategy and Management to provide students, faculty and staff with inclusive and accessible teaching and learning and event experiences.   

Publications / Presentations