Nancy K. Rivenburgh’s website Nancy K. Rivenburgh, Ph.D. is a professor emerita in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her primary research and teaching interests focus on cities as complex communication environments. Her most recent book Envisioning Better Cities: A Global Tour of Good Ideas (2019) highlights the myriad roles that communication … Read More

Gerry Philipsen is Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. He studies culturally distinctive codes of communicative conduct, and is the originator of the influential speech codes theory, an empirically grounded, testable, and tested scientific theory. Over the past thirty four years at the University of Washington, he has supervised thirty four doctoral dissertations … Read More

Jody Deering Nyquist is Associate Dean Emerita of the UW Graduate School and an emerita member of the graduate faculty of the UW Department of Communication. She was the University’s Director of the Center for Instructional Development and Research from 1984 to 2000. Both her undergraduate and graduate work were completed at the University where … Read More

Richard Kielbowicz, Associate Professor, teaches courses on communication law and policy, history of communication, and history of media technology. Most of his research focuses on pre-Internet communication networks, specifically the postal system, telegraphy, telephony, and early broadcasting. His studies examine how technology and public policy affected the circulation of public information (news, entertainment, advertising) — … Read More

Kathleen Fearn-Banks’ research is primarily in crisis communications. She departed from that subject recently to write The Historical Dictionary of African-American Television because of her two decades in network television. She will also soon resume the study of press secretaries of U.S. presidents. Highlights of accomplishments Honors

Lisa Coutu, Teaching Professor Emeritus, specializes in the study of communication and culture, the ethnography of communication, and discourse analysis. In particular, her research interests involve the study of how groups’ ways of speaking are created and maintained within the context of coexisting and competing ways of speaking. Now retired, she taught undergraduate courses in … Read More

Lance Bennett received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1974, and has taught since then at the University of Washington, where he is Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor Communication and Professor of Political Science. He is also founder and director of the Center for Journalism, Media and Democracy. The Center is dedicated to understanding … Read More

Professor Randal Beam does research about social and economic influences on the news. He teaches courses about journalism, mass media and society, and media business and economics. He is a co-author of The American Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium. That book, based on a national survey … Read More