Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Dr. DAWN O. BRAITHWAITE, WILLA CATHER PROFESSOR AND DEPARTMENT CHAIR, studies how people in personal and family relationships interact and negotiate family change and challenges. Her current work is centered in discourse dependent and understudied families, communication rituals, and relational dialectics in the context of stepfamilies, and voluntary kin. Dr. Braithwaite is the author of 90 articles and co-editor of five books. She received the National Communication Association's Brommel Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Family Communication and the University of Nebraska College of Arts & Sciences Award for Outstanding Research in the Social Sciences. She is a Past President of the National Communication Association (2010) and the Western States Communication Association (2000).
Representative PublicationsBraithwaite, D. O., & Schrodt, P. (in press). Communication in stepfamilies (2012). In A. Vangelisti (Ed.), Handbook of family communication (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Harrigan, M. M., & Braithwaite, D. O. (2010). Discursivestruggles in families formed through visible adoption: An exploration of dialectical unity. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 38, 127-144.
Braithwaite, D. O., Bach B. W., Baxter, L. A., Hammonds, J.,Hosek, A., Willer, E., Wolf, B. (2010). Constructing family: A typology of voluntary kin. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27, 388-407.
Braithwaite, D. O., Toller, P., Daas, K., Durham, W. & Jones, A. (2008). Centered, but not caught in the middle: Stepchildren's perceptions of contradictions of communication of co-parents. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 36, 33-55.
