Dr. Maggie Pitts (Department of Communication, University of Arizona) will present “Savoring the Language of Lovers, Flovers, and Friends Why Relational Communication Still Matters”.
Dr. Shaunak Sastry is Professor of Communication and Inaugural Director of the Pahl Center for the Study of Critical Social Issues at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Dr. Sastry is the First Vice-President of the National Communication Association. His award-winning global health communication research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Waterhouse Family Institute, and the Center for Clinical & Translational Science and Training. His areas of research interests include pandemic governance, health impacts of climate change, and community-engaged health research. Sastry currently serves as Co-Director of the Community Engagement Core of the Cincinnati Center for Collaboration on Climate and Community for Health (C4H), which is an NIH-funded P20 research center dedicated to studying the interactions between extreme weather, climate change, and health. His work has been published in a range of top-ranked Communication journals, including the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Communication Theory, Health Communication, Journal of Health Communication, and so on. He has previously served as Senior Editor of the journal Health Communication, and sits on the editorial boards of several leading journals in Communication.
Ph.D. (2012), Purdue University, Communication
MBA (2006), Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, India, Communications Management
B.A. (2004), St. Xavier's College, University of Mumbai, India, Psychology
Alison Oliver, Alan Crawley, and Soumyajit have received a Top Paper Award at the 2026 HICSS. Their paper, titled "Mapping the Moral Foundations of Machines: A Vignette-Based Inquiry into Moral Reasoning Across Six Large Language Model Platforms" will be part of the Proceedings of the 59th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
Hannah will join Michigan State University to be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Advertising + Public Relations in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences beginning in Fall of 2026.
See the UCSB Current Article: “NIH backs UCSB virtual reality project to help older adults build real social connections”. The project will test “how virtual reality can support older adults who are aging at home — and the family members and professionals who care for them.”
Laurent Wang has been hired, beginning Fall 2026 as Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations, located within the Moody College of Communication.
Walid Afifi, a professor of Communication and Assistant Dean of Social Sciences here at UCSB, was elected a National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar at the November 2025 annual conference. The award is the highest honor granted by the organization each year. This award highlights those with outstanding records in research, teaching, and service. For full story, see https://www.socialsciences.ucsb.edu/news/national-communication-association-grants-distinguished-scholar-award-dr-walid-afifi
See brief story and news teaser at https://keyt.com/news/2025/11/26/ucsb-mri-research-reveals-mental-health-roots-of-gaming-addiction/
Bedlam Oak won a top student paper award from the Organizational Communication Division of Western States Communication Association for the 2026 conference in San Diego. The title is "Resistance within resistance: The formation of spontaneous activist coalitions." Here’s the abstract: “The 2023-2024 academic year saw a surge in student protest organizing across the U.S., with over 130 encampments established in response to the war in Gaza. This single-campus case study examines the formation of such a movement and the challenges inherent in its organizing. Through interviews with activists and the construction of a detailed timeline, we trace how a unified coalition formed spontaneously in the days after the war began, evolved throughout the academic year, and ultimately fractured into two opposing groups due to internal conflict. We theorize that such Spontaneous Activist Coalitions (SACs) develop as a resistance to existing institutional decision-making structures when these structures limit how members respond to a social crisis.”