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Johanna Blakley, PhD,is the managing director and director of research atthe Norman Lear Center, a research and public policy institute that explores the convergence of entertainment, commerce and society. Based at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Blakley performs research on a wide variety of topics, including global entertainment, cultural diplomacy, entertainment education, celebrity culture, fashion, digital media and intellectual property law. She has two talks on TED.com: Social Media & the End of Gender and Lessons from Fashion’s Free Culture, which havelogged nearly one million views. She speaks frequently in the U.S. and abroad about her research and her work has beencited in Reuters, the New York Times, The Economist, the Washington Post,The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, Huffington Post,Business Week and PR Week. Currently, Blakley is the principal investigator of a research project that measures the impact of feature films and documentaries on the attitudes, knowledge and behaviors of viewers. She has overseen two major research initiatives about the impact of intellectual property rights on innovation and creativity – Ready to Share: Fashion & the Ownership of Creativity and Artists, Technology & the Ownership of Creative Content. Blakley is a regular contributor to the Lear Center Blog, and she has guided more than forty manuscripts through the publication process at the Lear Center. Blakley developed course materials on cultural diplomacy for the Masters in Public Diplomacy at Annenberg, and she lectures frequently at USC. She is currently co-directing a university-wide research initiative on Creativity & Collaboration in the Academy. Blakley oversees all the digital research initiatives at the Lear Center, including the development of research databases, video archives, an online video remixing platform, 3D modeling simulations and a research center in Second Life.