Elizabeth Dickinson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Communication, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Adjunct Instructor in Education and Oceanography, Nova Southeastern University Home | Research | CV | Teaching | AWARDS | Misc
CONTACT INFORMATION Dr. Elizabeth Dickinson Assistant Professor Communication Area Kenan-Flagler Business School McColl Building UNC-Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599 Adjunct Instructor Fischler School of Education Oceanographic Center Nova Southeastern University Virtual eadickins@gmail.com www.unm.edu/~edickins The trouble with the maples (and they’re quite convinced they're right) They say the oaks are just too lofty And they grab up all the light But the oaks can’t help their feelings If they like the way they’re made And they wonder why the maples Can’t be happy in their shade? “The Trees” by Rush	PROFILE I am an Assistant Professor in Communication in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-CH. I teach in the communication area, and my research focuses on communication, culture, environmental communication, and ecocultural sustainability. I am also an adjunct instructor at Nova Southeastern University, where I teach M.S.-level online social science courses in the Environmental Education and Oceanography programs. In 2010, I earned my Ph.D. in Communication from the Department of Communication at the University of New Mexico. RESEARCH My scholarship centers on qualitative, rhetorical, and critical research in two flows of inquiry that often meet—environmental/ecocultural communication and culture and communication, and increasingly, the rhetorical/cultural production of space/place, dialectics, and environmental justice. What connects this work is a focus on the perceptual, ecological, and relational effects of cultural systems and practices. Working within and between the critical, sociocultural, and rhetorical traditions in communication studies, I seek to: a) understand how meaning is created in social interaction through communication practices and processes b) examine the role of culture and context in how meaning is constructed c) question and critique the taken-for-granted systems, power structures, and ideologies that dominate society I incorporate qualitative, rhetorical, and critical approaches and methodologies, including participant observation, interviewing, ethnography, textual analysis, rhetorical criticism, and critical methods. In the area of environmental/ecocultural communication, I examine the social construction of nature, commercialized and consumer conceptualizations of nature, environmental education, environmental dialectics, space/place, and the epistemologies of science, politics, and ecological knowledge. In the area of culture and communication, I study how cultural ideologies are produced, consumed, performed, and resisted through communication and discourse. My goal is to examine how humans construct and produce knowledge and meaning about the natural world and how practices, histories, systems, and power influence human-nature relations. For publications, working papers, and projects, click here. DISSERTATION Title: Constructing, Consuming, and Complicating the Culture-Nature Binary: Communication Practices in Forest Environmental Education Description: I conducted a 5-month study in the North Carolina Educational State Forest system, where I used participant observation to investigate conservationist and science-based forest environmental education practices. I examined the strategies of and contexts surrounding forest conservation education and how they shape how visitors can come to understand, consume, and contest framings of nature. Specifically, I explored the dominant framings of nature that are promoted by rangers, teachers, forestry, curriculum, and larger cultural and political beliefs. Click here for the abstract and table of contents. Manuscripts from Dissertation: Dickinson, E. (2011). Displaced in nature: The cultural production of (non-) place in place-based forest conservation pedagogy. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 5(3), 300-319. [PDF] * 1st Place Top Paper in Environmental Communication, WSCA (2011) Milstein, T., & Dickinson, E. (forthcoming). Gynocentric greenwashing: The discursive gendering of nature. Communication, Culture & Critique. * 1st Place Top Paper in Environmental Communication, ICA (2012) Dickinson, E. (forthcoming). The misdiagnosis: Rethinking “nature-deficit disorder.” Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture Dickinson, E. (under review). Ecocultural schizophrenia: Dialectical environmental discourses and practices. Communication Monographs. Dickinson, E. (in process). The strange case of the interrupting bird: Negotiating and complicating ecopedagogical meaning systems BACKGROUND I was born and raised in Southern California. After earning a B.A. in Organizational Communication from California State University San Bernardino, I completed my M.A. from New Mexico State University with an emphasis in Intercultural Communication and Social Change. I taught English in Aomori, Japan for two years through the JET Program before moving to Los Angeles where I worked in marketing. I taught communication in Beijing through the University of Colorado Denver’s ICB program at China Agricultural University. I worked at a nonprofit in San Diego before moving to Miami where I was a communication instructor at Florida International University and Miami-Dade College. I completed my Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico in 2010 and, before coming to UNC, I spent a year teaching at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. I have experience in academic, nonprofit, business, and intercultural settings.
“The primary human reality is persons in conversation.”� (Ron Harre, 1983)		Website developed and maintained by Elizabeth Dickinson Send e-mail to: eadickins@gmail.com Modified: Summer 2012