Willa Cather Professor of Communication Studies Emerita, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Phone: (402) 540-8414
Email: dbraithwaite@unl.edu
Topics of Expertise:
Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & Marriage / Couples Conflict, Separation & Divorce / Step-Families
Dawn O. Braithwaite is a Willa Cather Professor of Communication Studies Emerita at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is a specialist in interpersonal and family communication, studying how people in personal and family relationships interact and negotiate family change and challenges in understudied and changing families, communication rituals, and dialectics of relating in stepfamilies, among voluntary kin, and by family kinkeepers. Her early work focused on communication of people with disabilities. Dr. Braithwaite’s research expertise is centered in interpretive qualitative methodologies. Dr. Braithwaite has authored over 150 articles and is co-author or co-editor of five books including Family Communication: Cohesion and Change, Engaging Theories in Family Communication. She is a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association and the Western States Communication Association and was President of both NCA and WSCA. Dr. Braithwaite received the National Communication Association’s Brommel Award for Outstanding Contributions in Family Communication, the division’s distinguished book award (which is now named after her), the UNL College of Arts & Sciences Award for Outstanding Research in Social Science and the university’s James O’Hanlon Academic Leader Award.
