AI and predictive persuasion
How classification, recommendation, and generative systems arrange rhetorical situations before a person reaches a decision.
Research profile / biographies / selected CV
Kieran Andrew James Helbling
A scholar and community practitioner working across rhetoric, mediation, predictive systems, trans studies, public scholarship, and critical making.
Short biography
50-word bio
Kieran Andrew James Helbling is a PhD student in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design at Clemson University. His work examines how technologies, media institutions, and public narratives organize meaning and recognition. He is co-founder and CEO of Trans Joy, where community storytelling, care, and public scholarship meet.
Extended biography
150-word bio
Kieran Andrew James Helbling is a PhD student in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design at Clemson University. His research brings rhetorical theory, critical technology studies, trans studies, visuality, and institutional critique into conversation. He studies mediation as the process through which technologies, platforms, documents, images, and public narratives make people and worlds intelligible. His current work examines predictive systems, classification, narrative authority, and the possibilities opened by contradiction, glitch, and unfinished form.
Kieran is also co-founder and CEO of Trans Joy, an Atlanta-based nonprofit centered on trans joy, care, community knowledge, advocacy, and public storytelling. He holds a BA in Urban Studies from San Diego State University and an MBA from The Pennsylvania State University. His academic and community practice draws on more than twenty-six years of management experience and a professional background in the technology industry.
Fields and conversations
Research keywords
rhetorical theorymediationpredictive systemsAI and platformstrans studiesclassificationrecognitionmedia ethicsvisual rhetoricpublic scholarshipcritical makingglitchinstitutional formscommunity knowledge
Speaking and media topics
Trans representation and media ethics
Trans voice, narrative authority, crisis framing, visibility, and the obligations of responsible reporting.
Platforms and trans digital safety
The gap between institutional safety promises and the moderation, reporting, and appeal systems trans people encounter.
Community practice as public scholarship
How care, joy, gathering, advocacy, and storytelling produce knowledge beyond conventional academic forms.
Mediation, visuality, and critical making
How interfaces, images, documents, sounds, and glitches organize perception, interpretation, and relation.
Selected CV
Selected academic and public record
Download PDFEducation
Clemson University — PhD student, Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design
The Pennsylvania State University — Master of Business Administration
San Diego State University — Bachelor of Arts, Urban Studies
Selected research and writing
Synthetic Sophists and the Predictive Situation — research in progress
In Consideration of Mediation as the Sixth Rhetorical Canon — developing theoretical project
Keyword Essay: Fantasy — selected writing sample
Selected public scholarship and media
2025 Transgender Social Media Safety Report — comparative platform research report
An Open Letter to the Media — public advocacy and media criticism
Trans Day of Visibility interview — Atlanta News First, 2026
Trans Joycast — public conversation and community storytelling
Community leadership and professional background
Trans Joy — Co-founder and CEO; community events, advocacy, public storytelling, and trans care initiatives
Technology and management — More than twenty-six years of leadership and management experience