Marketing
PHD Students
Abigail Green
Abigail Green joined the marketing Ph.D. program in Fall 2026. She earned her B.A. and M.S. in economics from the University of South Carolina. During that time, she interned with several organizations, including Coca-Cola Consolidated, the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association, and Spirax Sarco, gaining experience in marketing and social media management. Before beginning her doctoral studies, Abigail earned an M.S. in marketing from Clemson University, where she supported research at the Media Forensics Hub on financial and romance scams, as well as consumer interactions with artificial intelligence chatbots. Her research interests center on consumer behavior, digital marketing, and social media, particularly within the contexts of fashion, retail, and health and wellness.
Destin Hardesty
Destin Hardesty is a first-year marketing Ph.D. candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business. She earned her undergraduate degrees in marketing and psychology from the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, with interests in digital marketing, sensory marketing, visual processing and debiasing stereotypes. Before beginning her doctoral studies, Hardesty gained professional experience as a junior Salesforce analyst at Coastal Cloud and worked as a marketing and social media intern for a financial firm and a financial podcast.
Laurel Johnston
Email: [email protected]
Laurel Johnston entered the Ph.D. program in Department of Marketing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business in 2023. Her research interests center on marketing strategies, particularly for protecting customer data privacy, reacquiring lost customers and effective service recovery. Her premier dissertation essay was the first runner-up for the 2025 Southeast Marketing Symposium William O. Bearden Doctoral Student Research Award. Another investigation, focused on customer relationship recovery, recently received the American Marketing Association 2025 Strategy SIG Doctoral Student Research Award. Furthermore, Johnston’s combined efforts drove her selection as the UT Graduate Student Senate winner for Best Doctoral Research in 2025. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing and the Journal of Services Marketing. Prior to academia, Johnston worked in public communications for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she collaborated with global reserve bank leaders on projects related to international currency design and exchange. Her experience also includes social media, digital marketing and nonprofit marketing.
Chun Wang
Chun Wang entered Haslam’s Ph.D. program in marketing in fall 2025. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, with a particular interest in digital marketing and how visual cues in marketing communications shape consumers’ perceptions, judgments, and decisions. Prior to joining the doctoral program, she earned a master’s degree in marketing from Shanghai University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications.