jessica h. lu earned her Ph.D. in Communication (2018) and Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies (2015) from the University of Maryland, College Park. she earned her B.A. in Communication, specializing in rhetorical studies, from Villanova University (2011). 

trained as a rhetorical critic, she is concerned with how we can practice greater care for past, present, and future humans—especially those whose lives are shaped by precarity and state-sanctioned violence—in the ways we use language to create, design, and destroy our worlds. she examines, in particular, the ideas and rhetorical practices that form, advance, and disrupt racist logics in public discourse in the United States. her work is further positioned at the intersections of African American rhetorical history, archives, and digital humanities. 

she is currently the associate director of Design Cultures & Creativity (DCC) in the Honors College at the University of Maryland, and an adjunct professor in both the Master of Arts in Communication program in the Krieger School at Johns Hopkins University and the Master’s in Engaged & Public Humanities program at Georgetown University. She is also a Board member of the Baltimore Shakespeare Factory and former elected member of the TEI Technical Council.

jessica is the proud daughter of Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the United States in 1975. she resides outside Baltimore, Maryland, where she also cooks, bakes, sews, hikes, camps, practices and teaches yoga; enjoys living life alongside her wonderful and supportive husband; and happily serves as the unworthy human of an extraordinary cat named waffle.