Forbes magazine recently profiled UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS) PhD candidate Megan Threats in an article about soon-to-be doctoral graduates. The story focused on doctoral women of color who are thriving despite the interruptions and disappointments caused by COVID-19.

Threats’ dissertation, “Information Behaviors and Engagement Along The HIV Prevention and Care Continua,” examines how Black gay and bisexual men acquire and use HIV/AIDS information and how that motivates or deters their adoption of protective and risk reduction behaviors.

She successfully defended her dissertation on March 20, connecting via Zoom with her committee members, Amelia Gibson, Claudia Gollop, David Gotz, and Gary Marchionini from SILS and Kate Muessig from the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

“My defense was completely virtual, and at one point I lost internet connectivity at home during the defense,” she told Forbes magazine.

Though she is disappointed she won’t get to celebrate with her family, friends, and mentors at commencement this spring, Threats told Forbes she is glad to be finished and is looking forward to her next chapter.

She will join the faculty at the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University-New Brunswick as an assistant professor in the fall of 2020. She has also been selected as a REIDS Fellow in the Center for Interdisciplinary AIDS Research at the Yale School of Public Health.

Threats recently received the Horizon Award from the UNC Graduate School, which honors graduate students for discoveries that contribute to a better future for people and communities in North Carolina.

During her time at SILS, Threats earned multiple awards and honors, including the Clarivate Analytical/MLA Doctoral Fellowship, Chancellor’s Doctoral Candidacy Award, International P.E.O. Scholar Award, Beta Phi Mu Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and UNC Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

She was accepted to the 2018-19 ASIS&T Doctoral Colloquium and the 2019 iConference Doctoral Colloquium, served on panel at the 2019 Medical Library Association Conference, and mentored undergraduates as a 2019 i3 teaching fellow. She also won first place in both the ALISE Jean Tague-Sutcliffe Doctoral Student Research Poster Competition and the ASIS&T SIG HLTH student poster competition.

Threats holds a MS in Library and Information Science from Syracuse University, and a dual BA in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and Comparative Cultures and Politics from Michigan State University. Before coming to SILS, she was named a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Millennium Scholar, McNair Scholar, and an American Library Association Emerging Leader.

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