She completed her Ph.D. in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral thesis, “Crisis of Consumerism: Advertising, Activism, and the Battle over the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 1969-1980,” won the National Communication Association’s Most Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2014, Critical Cultural Studies Division. Another paper on regulatory debates over children’s advertising was awarded the Brian Murphy Best Paper Award at the 2013 Union for Democratic Communications conference in San Francisco, CA. Dr. Niesen is currently preparing a monograph-length manuscript for publication based on her doctoral dissertation work.