Howie and Jane Giles and former UCSB grads (Jessica Gasiorek and Sharde Davis) win 2023 Communication and Aging Outstanding Book Award from the National Communication Association’s CAD Division for their book: Giles, H., Gasiorek, J., Davis, S., & Giles, J. (2022).  Communication for successful aging: Empowering individuals across the lifespan. Routledge. The committee commented that the book “is nicely grounded in leading-edge theory and reflective of a productive line of research by the authors and other scholars,” and particularly appreciated that it “focuses squarely on communicative aspects of aging.”

Authors Yifeng Wang (University of Oklahoma), Ceciley (Xinyi) Zhang (UC Santa Barbara), and Yuwei Zhong (UC Davis) won the top student paper award from the Group Communication Division for the 2023 National Communication Association, for “Blaming Undocumented Immigrants in Crises: Revisiting Effects of Death and Economic Threats through Holistic Thinking Since COVID-19.”

The Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in the area of Latina/o/x/e-centered communication research. The Department seeks to hire a scholar who conducts theory-driven, culturally-informed, applied research on communication processes centering Latina/o/x/e communities. We desire candidates whose scholarship complements or extends at least one of the department’s three core areas in interpersonal and intergroup communication; media and digital communication; and organizational and group communication, as well as any of our cross-cutting emphases in health, community engagement, family, science, environmental, political, or global approaches to communication. We welcome a wide range of empirical approaches to research, including qualitative, quantitative, and/or mixed methods. The ideal candidate would further strengthen the department’s relationship with, for example, the Chicano Studies Institute, the Migration Initiative, the Center for Information Technology and Society, the Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies, or the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. The candidate would connect with UCSB’s vibrant group of scholars who are deeply committed to engaging in research, teaching, and service that uplifts Latina/o/x/e communities. As a Hispanic-Serving Institute with a large Latina/o/x/e undergraduate student population (~28%), candidates are expected to have expertise or demonstrated commitment to providing inclusive and equitable teaching and mentoring to students from Latina/o/x/e communities; knowing, understanding, and challenging the systemic barriers that Latina/o/x/e communities face in higher education and in the discipline; and engaging in service at the department, university, and/or disciplinary levels that prioritizes Latina/o/x/e communities. 

See the full job ad at:

https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02580

Dr. Tammy Afifi wins the NCA Mark Knapp award in Interpersonal Communication which recognizes career contributions to the study of interpersonal communication. The award recognizes individuals who have made significant scholarly contributions to the study of interaction and/or relational processes. As a recipient, Dr. Afifi has contributed to the quality of interpersonal communication through active involvement in the discipline, significant mentoring of students, and public service focused on interpersonal communication.

Rene Weber, Comm PhDs Frederic Hopp and Jacob Fisher, and colleagues have just had their article, Moral foundations elicit shared and dissociable cortical activation modulated by political ideology, published in Nature Human Behavior. The UCSB News Office writes, “Fascinated by this centuries-old debate, a team of researchers set out to probe the nature of morality using one of moral psychology’s most prolific theories. The group, led by UC Santa Barbara’s René Weber, intensively studied 64 individuals via surveys, interviews and brain imaging on the wrongness of various behaviors.” The full press release is here.

Chris Otmar is first author on a top paper, with Andy Merolla, in the Interpersonal Communication division of NCA. The paper, titled Early relational exclusion and present-day minority stress, social anxiety, and coping responses among sexual minority men, is to be presented in November. Congratulations, Chris!

Complete Citation: 

Otmar, C. D., & Merolla, A. J. (2023, November). Early relational exclusion and present-day minority stress, social anxiety, and coping responses among sexual minority men. Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, National Harbor, MD.