Courtney M. Cox

Project Director

Dr. Courtney M. Cox (she/her) is an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. Her research examines issues related to labor, identity, and technology through sport and wine.

She previously worked for ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut in Event Production (College Football, Heisman Trophy Presentation) and Studio Directing (SportsCenter, NBA Countdown, Baseball Tonight, and more).

Cox helped launch Longhorn Network in Austin, TX, working in live trucks, control rooms, and on set as a stage manager and associate director.

She has worked in public radio, including as a producer for KPCC in Pasadena, California and she spent a season with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks conducting research—an experience that significantly shaped the foundation for her later research, where she followed women’s basketball players around the world.

Cox’s first book, Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2025), examines how athletes and advocates within women’s basketball navigate their lives and labor within the contemporary sports-media landscape.

courtneymcox.com | cmcox at uoregon dot edu

Courtney’s walk-up song:

Perry B. Johnson

Project Director

Perry B. Johnson, Ph.D., is a music scholar, cultural historian and producer of several public-facing music and humanities projects. Her primary research and practice focus on music, popular culture and American cultural histories.

Johnson is the associate producer and co-host of the second season of Outside the Lyrics (coming March 2026), an award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary series from PBS that explores musical cultures and their subcultural offsprings through the stories of artistic pioneers.

Johnson is also at work on the manuscript for her first solo monograph, a cultural history of sexual misconduct in America’s popular music industries. With this project, Johnson examines how incidents of misconduct are framed to track how the sector’s historically grim collage of abuse is structurally, institutionally and ideologically produced and sustained by traditional and social media.

In her production work, Johnson has produced and organized events at The Getty Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Hammer Museum, La Brea Tar Pits, The Ebell of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles’ historic Palace Theatre, Regent Theater, and more.

Johnson teaches in the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California and she is the producer of Arts Talk, the official podcast of the USC Arts Now initiative.   

Johnson received her Ph.D. in communication from USC Annenberg, where she had a graduate affiliation in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies and was a research fellow with The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center. Prior to returning to USC Annenberg, Johnson was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Media at Risk with a joint appointment at the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication.

pbjohnso at usc dot edu

Dr. Johnson’s walk-up song:

Joshua Bloom is a Junior in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics, with a concentration in Marketing and Communications and a minor in Popular and Jazz Music. Josh’s passion for music, media, and entertainment has led him to pursue a unique combination of courses, extracurricular activities, and internships focused on developing the knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to innovate within the entertainment industry. Josh has delved into the many aspects of the music industry, including its intersection with culture, identity, business, and technology, and is excited to join the interdisciplinary SOV team and support its mission to explore the relationship among music, sound, and sport.

Joshua’s walk-up song:

Byon Kea

Project Assistant (2021 -2022)

Nora Youn

Project Assistant (2022)

Ia Balbuena

Project Assistant (2019-2020)

Byon Kea is a senior at the University of Oregon, majoring in Psychology with a minor in Ethnic Studies. Academically, Byon is interested in how mindfulness-based practices can improve modern therapy. His involvement in race and Ethnic Studies coursework is centered around his passion for further understanding how race informs our social reality. Byon joined the SOV team because of the project’s unique perspective on culture, and how the worlds of sport and music reveal intricacies that explain and encapsulate the human condition.

Byon’s walk-up song:

Nora (Junga) Youn is a Sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Political Science. She is interested in society in general, ranging from anthropology to global geopolitics. She’s focusing on political science for now to focus on current events and learn the mechanisms of creating tangible change through politics, but hopes to explore many other branches of the social science and humanities. Nora is also a musician and composer: she composes and manages marketing for Penn’s composing club Penn Compose, wrote about music for Penn’s arts and culture magazine 34st Street, and has been a violinist for eight years. Nora joined the Sound of Victory project because it combines her interest in society, culture, and music.

Nora’s walk-up song:

Ia Balbuena is a Junior at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. She is majoring in Advertising and minoring in Women and Gender Studies. Her coursework through the SOJC is helping her learn creative communication skills and pushing her to think outside the box, while her WGS coursework is equipping her with the history and language to articulate messages to people at all intersections of life in ways that are effective for their communities. Specifically, Ia is interested in the qualitative research that explores the ways in which different forms of media and culture interact with one another. She aspires to work within a creative agency that is driven by a passion to create ideas, initiatives, movements and works for social good.

You can find out more about Ia here on Twitter (@Iabalbuena1344) and Instagram (@iabalbuena).