2026 Symposium Participants
Moderators
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Dr. Kevin Coe (PhD, University of Illinois) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, where he also directs the Edna Anderson-Taylor Communication Institute. His research employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to better understand political communication, news media, and public opinion. He is the coauthor of two books, The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times (Oxford, 2021, with Joshua Scacco) and The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America (Oxford, 2010, with David Domke), as well as numerous research articles. |
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Dr. Leandra H. Hernández (PhD, Texas A&M University) is an associate professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. As a queer, feminist health and media studies scholar, her current teaching and research interests include the cultural causes and impacts of reproductive in/justice and gendered violence, as well as the ways in which communities and organizations resist violence in embodied and mediated spaces. She has published several co-edited books, one monograph, and numerous articles and chapters. Most recently, she is the recipient of the 2025 NCA Everett Hughes Holle Award for Social Justice and Community Engagement, and the 2026 NCA Robert J. Kibler Memorial Award. |
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Dr. Marleah Dean Kruzel, PhD, FSBM, is a professor, researcher, and speaker specializing in healthcare communication. A BRCA2 previvor and daughter of a 29-year breast cancer survivor, her research focuses on uncertainty, medical decision making, and communication of hereditary cancer risk. She is an expert on the health experiences and decisions of previvors, individuals with inherited gene mutations who have not been diagnosed with cancer. Her research has been published in leading journals and funded by the NCI, ACS, CDC, and PCORI. Marleah is committed to patient engagement and translating research into practice. She serves as a CDC Bring Your Brave spokesperson and Scientific Advisory Board member for Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered (FORCE) and My Faulty Gene. |
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Dr. Joshua M. Scacco (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. Dr. Scacco also is the founding and current Director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy in the College of Arts & Sciences at USF. He is a 2025-2026 Carnegie Fellow with the Carnegie Foundation (formerly the Carnegie Corporation of New York). His research interests broadly focus on political communication, media content and effects, the political dimensions of public health, as well as communication and democracy. |
Presenters
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Dr. Karrin Vasby Anderson is Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University and Co-Director of the Center for Democracy, Art, and Popular Culture. Dr. Anderson studies the ways in which political identity is rhetorically constructed and contested in popular media. She also researches the connections between gender equity and democratic health. She is coauthor or editor of three books, numerous scholarly essays, and is regularly consulted by national media outlets. She is a past editor of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and in 2025 she was named a National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar. |
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Dr. Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, PhD, MPH is a Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a co-founder of Mosaic Research Frameworks. After a 16-year tenure as a Program Director in health communication at the National Cancer Institute, Sylvia resigned in January. A prolific communication scholar with over 130 peer-reviewed publications, her research on misinformation, social media, relationship-centered communication, and end-of-life discourse have been referenced in major outlets. A signer and organizer of the Bethesda Declaration, an open letter on harmful policies at the NIH, she is writing and speaking about academic freedom and collective action to protect the US health research infrastructure. |
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Dr. Stewart M. Coles is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His work examines how characteristics of media users and texts influence political beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, particularly in social media and entertainment contexts. His research addresses questions of the fundamental nature of the political and how people think—or don’t think—about politics. He has published in journals such as Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, and Human Communication Research, and he and his work have been featured in popular press outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC. |
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Clare Dougherty serves as CEO of Brem Foundation to Defeat Breast Cancer. She has worked at the intersection of public policy, communications, and mission-driven leadership for the last 25 years, focusing on the health of women and children. As CEO, Clare oversees all facets of Brem Foundation, working to advance early detection of breast cancer through strategic education, access programs and targeted advocacy. Prior to this, Clare spent over 15 years at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, leading their global communication and advocacy efforts. She holds a master’s degree in Urban Affairs and Planning from Hunter College and a bachelor’s degree in Communication from Boston University. |
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Sara Kavanaugh is a communications strategist, speaker, and patient advocate who uses storytelling and lived experience to make complex health information more understandable and actionable. A hereditary cancer previvor, she hosts The Positive Gene Podcast and co-founded Previvor Perspectives with Marleah Dean Kruzel, PhD, creating conversations that connect people with credible information and resources. Sara serves on the boards of Connect My Variant and Lynch Syndrome Awareness & Education. She is also a FORCE Patient Advocate Leader and Peer Navigator. Her work has brought patient perspectives into educational programs, published research, media, and conversations with policymakers at state legislatures and on Capitol Hill. |
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Dr. Crystal Y. Lumpkins is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah and a member of Huntsman Cancer Institute’s Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program. Her research examines how communication, community engagement, and equitable access to health information shape cancer outcomes. Drawing on community-based participatory research, precision public health, and dissemination and implementation science, she works alongside historically underserved communities in the Mountain West and Midwest to address gaps in cancer prevention, hereditary cancer risk assessment, genetic counseling and testing, and access to evidence-based health information. She received her PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2007 and completed a Certificate in Community-Based Participatory Research from the University of Kansas in 2015. |
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Dr. Ben Lyons is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Utah and a 2026-27 Andrew Carnegie Fellow with the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. He studies the intersection of media, politics, and public understanding of science. His research has been published in journals such as Science, PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Aging, Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, and Vaccine, and featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Der Spiegel, and other outlets. He serves as an Associate Editor for the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. His book Misinformation and the Aging American (2026) is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. |
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Dr. José Ángel Maldonado is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of South Florida, specializing in Rhetorical Theory, Cultural Studies, Film and Television Criticism, and Contemporary Mexican Culture. His book, Falling to My Death: Vertical Rhetorics in Neoliberal Mexico (Clemson University Press, 2025), won NCA’s Diamond Anniversary Book Award, among other honors. There, he combines memoir and cultural criticism of visual media to expose the normalization of violence as a rhetorical process. His research appears in various academic journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication and Democracy, and Rhetoric & Public Affairs. |
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Dr. Victoria (Tori) McDermott (Ph.D., University of Maryland, she/her/hers), is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research explores how power is communicated in traditionally masculine environments such as the military, academia, and within social media. Her research can be found in Public Relations Review, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Communication Law Review, Feminist Pedagogy, and the Journal of Communication Pedagogy. She is also the first editor and co-editor of five edited volumes covering topics ranging from Supporting Military Affiliated Learners (2020) to Challenging Representations of True Crime in Media (2026). |
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Dr. Arcia Tecun is the pen name of Dr. Daniel Hernandez who is a Wīnak (highland Maya descendant) scholar. They are a parent, partner, child, homie, and relative to many. Their interests include global Indigeneities, tempo-spatiality, eco/food justice, popular music, religion, and more. Tecun is an assistant professor of Indigenous Communication and Critical Cultural Studies at the University of Utah. |
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Olivia Webster, MA is the Marketing and Communications Specialist at the University of Utah’s McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. In these roles, she combines her passion for education and strategic communication with the goal of creating a world free from violence. Olivia also serves on the boards of the Edna Anderson-Taylor Communication Institute and Amplify Utah, where she supports initiatives focused on communication and community engagement. She is a proud alumna of the University of Utah’s Communication graduate program. |
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Dr. Haoning Xue is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Utah and a Faculty Fellow with the One-U Responsible AI Initiative. Her research focuses on how people seek, process, and evaluate information in emerging technology-mediated environments. Using computational and experimental methods, she examines how short videos and generative AI shape attention, risk perception, and health decision-making. Her work appears in communication, health, and computing venues, including Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Health Communication, and the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM). |
