Sharon Dunwoody

After a brief career as a newspaper science and environmental reporter, I went back to school for graduate training, became excited about studying communication processes, and went on to earn the Ph.D. in mass communication and a subsequent academic career. Today I am Evjue-Bascom Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Associate Dean for Social Studies in the Graduate School, and serve on the Governance Faculty of the University's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. I study how science and environmental messages are generated by the mass media, as well as the effects of those messages on a variety of audiences. Most recently, my work has focused on the role of media messages in individuals' risk judgments.I have always felt protective of nature and struggle to understand what equity means in a world where human activity seems to dominate every corner of the globe. One of my goals as a social scientist is to better understand human/ecology interactions through the lens of communication.