Bio
Dr. Charles Braithwaite is a senior lecturer and a Fellow in the Center for Great Plains Studies and a Graduate Fellow in the Department of Anthropology. He teaches courses in intercultural communication, conflict management, interviewing, and nonverbal communication for the Department of Communication Studies. Dr. Braithwaite also directs the “Global Classroom Project,” which uses the commercial internet to have live, synchronous video classes between Nebraska and universities in Costa Rica, Japan, Russia, and Turkey. His international experience includes serving as a North Vietnamese interpreter for U.S. Naval Intelligence, and studying international business communication along the U.S./Mexican border. Dr. Braithwaite has a special interest in American Indian higher education, and had conducted research on the Navajo Nation, and among the U-Mo’n-Ho’n (Omaha), the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) tribes of Nebraska.
Bio
Dr. Dawn O. Braithwaite is a Willa Cather Professor and Department Chair. Dr. Braithwaite studies how people in personal and family relationships communicate and negotiate family change and challenges. Her research centers on communication in understudied and changing families, communication rituals, and dialectics of relating in stepfamilies and among voluntary (fictive) kin. Dr. Braithwaite has authored over 120 articles and is co-author or co-editor of five books including Family Communication: Cohesion and Change and Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication. Dr. Braithwaite is a past president of the Western States Communication Association and a past president of the National Communication Association.
Bio
Dr. Jody Kellas is a professor who conducts research and teaches classes on interpersonal, family, and health communication. The overarching purpose of her research program is to study the ways in which narratives, storytelling, and related forms of communicated sense-making can help individuals and families understand, negotiate, and improve communication and coping within the context of difficulty and illness. Her research lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln - NARRATIVE NEBRASKA - seeks to implement interdisciplinary, narrative-based interventions to improve caregiving, communication, and psychosocial well-being for families and care providers.
Bio
Dr. Jordan Soliz is a professor who studies communication and intergroup processes primarily in family and personal relationships. Current projects focus on communication in multiethnic-racial families, interfaith families, and grandparent-grandchild relationships with a goal toward understanding communicative dynamics associated with individual well-being and relational-family solidarity. He also investigates processes and outcomes of intergroup contact and intergroup dialogue as well as communication processes that minimize outgroup attitudes (e.g., ageism) and/or buffer effects of discrimination.
Bio
Allison Bonander is an assistant professor of practice and the director of speech, interpersonal, family, and health communication program. Her research focuses on gender communication and conversations regarding sex education primarily focusing on family communication, gay and lesbian parenting, and communication centered in gender and sexuality. Bonander is also the associate director of the university’s speech and debate team, serving as the director of interpretation.