Kristin Engstrand Moran earned her M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2000) from the School of Communications. She is a professor of communication at the University of San Diego where she teaches a range of media studies courses. During her time at USD, she has held administrative positions, including department chair, the inaugural core curriculum director and associate dean for faculty since 2017. In her role as associate dean, she updated faculty hiring practices, facilitated search committee anti-bias training, and instituted a formal mentoring program to support new faculty and department chairs using a mission-centered approach. During the 2024-2025 academic year, she was a fellow through the American Council on Education (ACE) and placed at Loyola Marymount University where she worked with the executive leadership team.

Moran’s scholarship is grounded in Latinx Media Studies investigating how media discourse shape our understanding of the Latinx community and can be found in the Journal of Children and Media, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Mass Communication and Society and various edited volumes. Her book, Listening to Latino/a Youth: Television Consumption within Families (2011), traces the development of Spanish-language and Latino-themed media in the United States and includes an analysis of how Latinx families incorporate media into their daily lives. Her current research investigates the shifting strategies of digital delivery and its impact on the creative process and audience reception, most recently analyzing the role of Latino Journalism in the contemporary news environment.