Expositions and Exhibitions: Chicago’s Involvement with Early Healthcare Technology for Premature Infants

The project “Expositions and Exhibitions: Chicago’s Involvement with Early Healthcare Technology for Premature Infants” draws upon the Newberry Library’s collections to better understand Chicago’s relationship with neonatology, infants, and the use of technology as showcased during the Columbian Exposition (1893), the Baby Tent Exhibition (1911), the Century of Progress (1933-34), and other relevant events. As a Newberry Library scholar-in-residence for 2019-2020, this research will contribute to preliminary work for a larger book project exploring healthcare technologies in critical care hospital contexts.

Grotesque Protests: Bodily Fluids, Social Media, and Activist Rhetorics

Based on “Grotesque Protests in Social Media as Embodied, Political Rhetoric” (Bivens & Cole, 2018), this collaborative book project will examine how social media enables embodied, political protests in the United States and throughout the world. By analyzing political protests that use various body fluids, we argue these embodied, political protests are grotesque and used to recast power relations. In the process, these protestors provide rhetorical counter-strategies to populist discourse, which mirror other historical attempts to do much of the same.

Locating Technical and Professional Communication at Two-Year Institutions

Commencing in August 2018, “Locating Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) at Two-Year Institutions” endeavors to identify and learn about courses, curricula, certificates, emphases, concentrations, and programs of TPC at two-year institutions. Generously funded by a 2018 Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) research grant, the research team includes Timothy J. Elliott (DePaul University), Gustav Karl Henrik Wiberg (Harold Washington College and Nordic Electrochemistry ApS), and two undergraduate student research assistants.

Improving the Design of Visual Risk Communication through a Content Analysis of a Crowdsourced Public Health App’s Existing User Comments

Candice A. Welhausen and I were awarded a 2019 Association of Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC) career advancement research grant for our research using grounded theory and affinity diagramming to analyze the content of existing PulsePoint Respond Android and iOs user comments.The project includes 2 undergraduate student research assistants.

Healthcare Application (App)

Based in my aural/sonic research in acute care hospital contexts and currently in preliminary discovery and development, the healthcare app will be marketed to hospital administrators and unit educators. Specifically, the healthcare app will be a clearinghouse and storehouse of information for friends and family of patients in intensive care units.

last update 01/2020