Donal Carbaugh is Emeritus Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
He is recipient of the University’s highest awards for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity in addition to the Samuel F. Conti Faculty Research Fellowship; he is also the recipient of teaching awards as a Graduate Mentor, a Hewlett Fellow, and as a finalist for the university’s campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award. In June of 2017, a conference on New Directions in the Ethnography of Communication was held in his honor at Mount Saint Vincent College, New York City. In 2016, he was named a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association (NCA) for a lifetime of achievement. In 2007-2008, he was appointed Fulbright’s Distinguished Professor and Bicentennial Chair of North American Studies at the University of Helsinki Finland.
Carbaugh’s general interests focus upon cultural philosophies of communication, the environment, and the ways culturally distinctive practices get woven into international and intercultural interactions. His studies focus upon Native American, popular American, Russian, and Finnish communication practices, with special attention to the relationship between language use, culture, spirit, and nature. In 1992, he was elected Visiting Senior Member at Linacre College, Oxford University, England, which is a lifetime position. He has held academic appointments at the Universities of Colorado, Montana, Pittsburgh, the University of Helsinki, the University of Tampere, the Turku School of Economics in Finland, and at other universities. He currently serves on about twenty editorial boards of national and international journals. His published research has appeared in many major academic journals, in several countries including Finland, Germany, Italy, and Russia, in several languages.
His recent books include: Reporting cultures on 60 Minutes (with Michael Berry), and, The Handbook of Communication in Cross-cultural Perspective (edited). His authored book, Cultures in Conversation, was awarded the “Old Chestnut” in Language and Social Interaction and Outstanding Book of the Year in International and Intercultural Communication from that division of the National Communication Association. His edited volume, Cultural Communication and Intercultural Contact, received the National Communication Association’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship in International and Intercultural Communication. His other books include Distinctive Qualities in Communication Research (with Patrice Buzzanell), Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture (edited with Jens Brockmeier), and Situating Selves: The Communication of Social Identity in American Scenes. His favored perspective on communication is an entry in several international encyclopedia and has been featured in the Journal of Multicultural Discourses, in Language and Intercultural Communication, by the National Academies in 2010, and as a key perspective for community work by the British Dialogue Society. Commentary on his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Indian Country Today, Psychology Today(several times and includes a January 2007 article about Finnishness), Vapaa Sana (North America’s largest Finnish newspaper), theFinnish American Reporter, the Moscow Times, The Times of India, and Gentleman’s Quarterly among other outlets.
Work for CID:
Donal Carbaugh wrote about his Fulbright experience. He was on the organizing committee for the National Communication Association’s Summer Conference on Intercultural Dialogue in Istanbul, Turkey, which led to the creation of CID, and has served on the CID Advisory Board. He also served as a reviewer of micro-grants distributed by CID (funded by the National Communication Association).
“Having originally focused on form-based approaches to gesture in spoken discourse (specialising in the expression of negation), my view of gesture increasingly integrates notions from multimodal interaction and embodied cognitive science. This has expanded my analytical unit for gesture and attracted me to analysing more complex domains of social and professional interaction. So while I continue to study recurrent aspects of gesture, my latest studies also include eye-gaze in multiactivity among lifeguards (Text & Talk), gesture in assisted performance during collaborative learning (Lingua), embodied interaction in Chinese real estate showrooms (Metaphor & Symbol).
His research includes theory-building efforts in message effects, persuasion, narrative influences, and dynamic processes of media selection, media effects, and maintenance of personal and social identity, with a particular interest in health outcomes, with over 130 publications in these and related areas. He has served as principal investigator of NIH-funded studies of community-based substance abuse prevention efforts, alcohol-related risk perceptions and media coverage, and responses to alcohol advertisements and warnings (representing over $12 million in funded research grants). He also has served as chair of the International Communication Association’s Health Communication Division and was founding chair of the Coalition for Health Communication.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 