Robyn Penman (PhD, University of Melbourne) is an independent communication scholar and consultant to government on communication and social policy matters.
She was a Founding Director of the Communication Research Institute of Australia (1987-2000) and an Adjunct Professor in Communication at the University of Canberra (1999-2005). Robyn is a past President (1985-6) and Life Member of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association, has served on the International Communication Association board (2002-3) and is a Visiting Senior Member, Linacre College, Oxford (1987). She was also the Associate Editor of the Australian Journal of Communication (1984-2003) and has served on the editorial boards of Communication Theory and Human Communication Research. She is currently a board member of the CMM Institute, Co-Director of the Cosmopolis2045 project, and General Editor of CMMi Press.
Robyn has devoted her scholarly career to the development of a practical-theoretic approach to understanding communicating as a relational practice. She has been equally as focused on asking questions about what makes for good communicating, especially in the public, civic sphere, and how this understanding can be used to make better social worlds. She is the author of five books—Communication Process and Relationships, Not the Marrying Kind (with Yvonne Stolk), Reconstructing Communicating: Looking to a Future, Making Better Social Worlds (with Arthur Jensen) and Justice in the Making: Relating, Participating, Communicating—along with many book chapters and journal articles.
Robyn welcomes contact via email.
Work for CID:
Robyn Penman has written KC4: Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), KC8: Public Dialogue, KC15: Cultural Pluralism, KC29: Dialogue Civility, and KC37: Dialogic Listening. She has also written two guest posts, Feeling Felt: The Heart of the Dialogic Moment? and Dialogue in the Interests of Justice. And she provided a book review of The coordinated management of meaning: A festschrift in honor of W. Barnett Pearce. Finally, she served as initial graphic design consultant for CID, establishing the format for Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue.