Brian Lamb School of Communication
Ph.D.'s on the Job Market
Zhuo Ban
zban@purdue.edu
Advisor: Mohan J. Dutta
Vita
Zhuo Ban’s research takes a public relations approach to issues of activism, offshoring and corporate crises. Her dissertation, “Labor Activism without borders:Re-theorizing Activism in Public Relations in the Context of Offshore Labor”, takes a culture-centered approach to PR in its exposition of how industrial labor in China’s large offshore manufacturing industries make sense of global sweatshop activism and their role within such activist projects. Zhuo has worked on several research projects at Purdue, and has taught and assisted a wide range of courses during her graduate career, including communication theory, quantitative research, public relations theory, Interviewing, and Presentational Speaking, and is interested in teaching in areas like corporate crises, public affairs management, theories of activism, as well as basic and intermediate statistical methods.
Jennifer Kim Bernat
jbernat@purdue.edu
Advisor: Glenn D. Sparks
Vita
Jennifer Kim Bernat’s research focuses on the social scientific approach to message design in both mass and health communication. Specifically, she has a particular interest in the impact of an individual’s cancer worry on adherence to cancer communication messages. Her published articles have appeared in Human Communication Research, Journal of Health Communication, Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, and Health Communication. Jennifer has seven years of teaching experience and has taught a wide variety of classes, ranging from communication theory to quantitative research methods. She is also a yoga instructor in the Department of Recreational Sports at Purdue and is working on obtaining her Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher 200 Hour Certification. Combining her passion for research, teaching, and travel, she has spent the past five summers abroad either teaching English, collecting data as a NSF EAPSI scholar, or attending conferences. In the future, she plans to continue her research on emotions and health and building her international collaboration network.
Nick Carcioppolo
ncaricop@purdue.edu
Advisor: Susan Morgan
Vita
Nick’s research interests are predominantly focused on primary and secondary cancer prevention, with a concentration on campaign design and evaluation, as well as the process of media influence. He is currently leading two projects that address these interests. First, as part of a cancer prevention fellowship on campus sponsored by the NIH, Nick is conducting an intervention to decrease students’ use of indoor tanning beds in an effort to reduce skin cancer incidence rates.The intervention compares the effectiveness of narrative pamphlets versus tailored infographics. His dissertation project examines how discrete emotions mediate the relationship between exposure to televised cancer narratives and cancer-relevant outcomes (i.e. cancer fatalism, cancer worry, cancer information overload, and prevention intentions).
Nathalie Desrayaud
ndesraya@purdue.edu
Advisor: Stacey Connaughton & Steve Wilson
Vita
Nathalie Desrayaud’s research focuses on conflict in both organizational and interpersonal contexts using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Generally, she studies individual and communal perceptions of conflict and their impacts on group or dyad dynamics. Organizational research interests include organizational culture, conflict management systems, and perceptions of conflict norms. Interpersonal research interests include stakes in conflict, valence of definitions of conflict, and individual preferences for conflict management strategies. Courses taught include Interpersonal Communication, Communication Theory, Small Group Communication, and Quantitative Methods.
Sydney Dillard
sdillard@purdue.edu
Advisor: Mohan J. Dutta
Vita
Sydney Dillard’s research interests hybridizes both media and health communication fields with particular emphasis on visual representations, race, and health inequities. Her research on issues of race and media centers on the visual communication of African American physical attractiveness in advertisements and the ways in which images are internalized and negotiated in the lives of young African Americans. Her health and media interests centralize health disparities that are most prevalent among African Americans and analyze how health information is represented in print and new media. She is currently a Graduate Lecturer and has taught a diversity of media courses including Mass Communication in Society, Advertising/IMC Principles, Creating Advertising/IMC Messages, Graphic Communication, and Social Issues in Advertising. She is also the Project Coordinator for a $1.5 million project, which develops community-specific resources to optimize the reach, effectiveness, and access of cutting-edge medical treatment options among underserved populations. This project is directed at addressing the risks of heart disease faced by African American communities in the two largest counties of Indiana.
Raihan Jamil
rjamil@purdue.edu
Advisor: Mohan J. Dutta
Vita
Raihan Jamil's research utilizes the culture-centered approach to engage in a reflexive journey that examines the doctor-patient interaction in a marginalized community, converging in theintersections of culture, structure, and agency. The increasing health disparities between the resource rich and the resource poor sectors of the globe play out in the domains of access to healthcare as well as the quality of care received by patients. Raihan's research attempts to co-construct and try to understand health discourses that emerge from within the doctor-patient interactions in a developing country. His other research interests include message design, presentational speaking, interviewing, business communication, symbolic violence and power in communicative processes and practices.
Andy King
ajking@purdue.edu
Advisor: Susan Morgan
Vita
Andy’s primary research interest is the study of health communication campaigns and interventions, most recently focused on the secondary prevention of cancer. His current research program examines one component of these social processes through the study of visual persuasion and visual information. Recent studies focus on visual message features and how their interaction with verbal message features and audience perceptions influence antecedents to persuasion and behavior change such as intentions, self-efficacy, skills enhancement, and knowledge acquisition. Andy was awarded a Ross Fellowship in his first year of doctoral studies, as well as a cancer prevention fellowship funded through the National Institutes of Health. He plans to pursue his research on visual persuasion through continued interdisciplinary collaboration. For additional information, please visit www.andyjking.net
Pamela L. Morris
plmorris@purduee.du
Advisor: Stacey Connaugton
Vita
Pamela Morris’ research explores issues of the design and use of computer‐based communication technologies in organizational contexts. Her work explores the ways in which technology, as it is socially constructed, influences organizational communication practices, particularly in technical contexts such as virtual work, software engineering, and scientific teams. Her dissertation was titled: Assimilation to virtual work: A mixed-methods case study of organizational change.
Prashant Rajan
rajan.prashant@gmail.com
Advisor: Lorraine Kisselburgh
Vita
Prashant Rajan is a fourth year doctoral student at the Brian Lamb School for Communication. His dissertation: “Organizing grassroots innovation: The Honey Bee Network” directed by Prof. Lorraine G. Kisselburgh, is an ethnographic study of how technological innovations are designed, developed, and implemented across grassroots communities in India. Prashant is interested in situating communities as the sites for research on innovation and knowledge sharing. As part of an NSF-funded project on virtual organizations as sociotechnical systems, he has co-developed new methods for mining data across multiple academic databases to identify the emergence of interdisciplinary communities within the domain of Engineering Education Research. Prashant is also combining social network analysis and semi-structured interviews which draw on theories of social capital and transactive memory to study the evolution and sustainability of virtual and physical organizations which emerge from informal research collaborations. He maintains a strong interest in the mobility of global labor, particularly the d/Discourses influencing international highly skilled workers’ abilities and decisions to work outside their countries of origin. Current areas of interest include: (a) Knowledge sharing and learning processes within and across small groups, communities, organizations, and, disciplines; (b) Collaboration and innovation at the micro-, meso-, and, macro-levels of organization; (c) Sustainable, innovative technology design by and for communities; and; (d) Knowledge work and the mobility of global labor.
Susan Sarapin
shuelsin@purdue.edu
Advisor: Glenn D. Sparks
Vita
Susie Sarapin, a Monroe Scholar, focuses her research on media effects, specifically as they relate to public perceptions of the criminal justice system and of scientific concepts and techniques. Susie relates these perceptions to the dynamics of persuasive discourse in the courtroom from the juror’s perspective. She is now exploring the effects of media consumption on jurors’ deliberation communication, and how this may affect persuasion toward or away from a particular verdict. Coming from a science and art background and a successful career in medical art and graphic design, Susie extends her research into her STEM-oriented teaching of the communication of science to a lay audience, including visual persuasion techniques. For more information, please visit http://www.susansarapin.com .
Shaunak Sastry
ssastry@purdue.edu
Advisor: Mohan J. Dutta
Vita
Shaunak Sastry’s primary area research is in Global Health Communication, and in particular global HIV/AIDS policies and campaigns. His dissertation, entitled “Drivers of India’s HIV/AIDS epidemic: Culture-centered co-constructions with long-distance truck drivers” that seeks to identify the broad based structural barriers to health faced by India’s large truck driver population, won the 2011-2012 Purdue Research Foundation grant. Through the culture-centered principle of co-construction and dialogue, this ethnographic research project seeks to problematize the tensions between health interventions targeted at truckers and truckers’ life experiences. Shaunak employs his training and professional experience in the advertising industry in teaching courses like Advertising Writing, Advertising Theory and Presentational Speaking at Purdue. His teaching interests include Health and Culture, Critical approaches to Communication, Ethnographic Research Methods and the Semiotics of Advertising.
Huijun Suo
hsuo@purdue.edu
Advisor: Stacey Connaughton
Vita
Huijun Suo’s research focuses on identity, collaboration, and adaptation in various contexts, particularly as these issues relate to virtual teams/organizations, multicultural organizations, and non-profit organizations. Her dissertation, which is supported by Purdue Research Foundation, advances scholarship on organizational identity by introducing an ecological lens that highlights organization-environment fit. Specifically, Suo employs mixed methods (i.e., interviews, a network survey, a close reading of organizational documents) to investigate how Chinese NGOs utilized organizational identities, discourses, and connections in order to meet their organizational goals in a changing environment. Her research, more broadly, also explores how social media enable individuals, organizations, and communities to increase social capital (e.g., gain resources and mobilize collective action). Suo employs her research and intercultural experience to teach both upper-level and lower-level courses at Purdue University, including Communication and Emerging Technologies, Introduction to Communication Theories, Mass Media and Society, and Presentational Speaking.
Kari Wilson
kmwilson@purdue.edu
Advisor: Hyunyi Cho
Vita
Kari Wilson's research examines the intersections of mass and interpersonal communication applying to contexts such as health, body image and adolescents. Three areas that she is interested in include the relationships of the audience to media characters, implications of mass media on relationships, and the portrayal of relationships within the media. A significant portion of her research has focused on the formation, development, and dissolution of parasocial relationships. Her dissertation examines three types of identification with thin media celebrities and their effect on women's body image concerns and weight management behaviors. She plans to extend her research to investigate the use of new technology in maintaining relationships with media characters.
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