Crystal Chokshi, PhD
Assistant Professor, Public Relations

Crystal joined the School of Communication Studies at Mount Royal University in July 2022. She holds a BA (English) from the University of Ottawa, an MA (English) from Simon Fraser University, and a PhD (Communication and Media Studies) from the University of Calgary, where she was a SSHRC doctoral fellow and Killam scholar.

Crystal’s research has two chief preoccupations. First, she examines how colonial logics are built into acts and technologies of writing. Second, she carries out critical praxis that challenges the communicative and linguistic futures that technology companies are charting. She brings her research into the classroom, challenging PR students to discern and disrupt colonial logics in our communication and media technologies.

Crystal’s work is published in The Canadian Journal of Communication, Surveillance & Society, Culture Machine, Real Life, and The Conversation Canada.

Crystal layers her academic practice on top of a 15-year career in strategic communication, which spanned the public, private, and voluntary sectors. In her experience, practitioners with the best of intentions often replicate harmful discourses. She aims, therefore, to intervene at a formative stage of communicators’ training in order to surface this question: which communities benefit from our communication and PR choices, and which communities don’t?

In Fall 2023, Crystal will teach Introduction to Public Relations (PUBR 1841) and Strategic Communication Planning (PUBR 4841). In Winter 2024, she’ll teach Interpersonal Communication (PUBR 1845) and Computer-Mediated Communication (PUBR 3851).