Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 1999

Office: CMU 351
E-Mail: kfoot@uw.edu

Kirsten Foot, Dart Endowed Professor in Trauma, Journalism, and Communication and adjunct faculty in the iSchool, currently studies organizing processes between groups, organizations, and sectors of society, and the communication practices that advance collaboration for social change. Prior to joining the faculty at the U. of Washington, she held a postdoctoral research appointment at the U. of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, and a Fulbright fellowship at the U. of Helsinki’s Center for Research on Activity, Development, and Learning. She has researched the production of electoral web spheres in the U.S. and around the world, the development of a conflict monitoring network in the Commonwealth of Independent States, and online networks in the fair trade movements in the U.S. and the UK. A member of the Global Association of Human Trafficking Scholars, she leverages her expertise on organizing processes in research on multi-sector collaboration in the anti-human trafficking movement, and trauma-informed and hope-based journalism on human trafficking.

Dr. Foot’s award-winning book, Collaborating Against Human Trafficking: Cross-Sector Challenges and Practices (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), suggests constructive paths through common tensions between organizations– to build more robust and sustainable collaborative efforts.

Dr. Foot is also co-editor of Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Media, and Society (MIT Press, 2014), The Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning (Routledge, 2007), and the lead author of Web Campaigning (MIT Press, 2006).

Her broader interests include cultural-historical activity theory and other practice-based theories of organizing and technology, and in this vein she co-edits the Acting With Technology Series at the MIT Press. Her work has been published in a wide array of journals within the field of communication and beyond. She teaches courses on topics such as organizational communication, multisector collaboration for social change, qualitative research methods, and human trafficking.

Selected publications

Publication topics include:
Fair Trade and Human Trafficking | Cultural-Historical Activity Theory | Web Research Methods | Politics and the Internet | the Post-911 Web

Fair trade and human trafficking

Cultural-historical activity theory

Web research methods

Politics and the internet

The post-9/11 web