Dr. Kirsten Isgro
Chair & Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Kirsten Isgro is an associate professor in communication studies. Her academic interests include critical cultural studies; media, religion and culture; and health communication. As an instructor and facilitator of undergraduate classes over the last two decades, she maintains a firm belief in active learning, creative group projects and a commitment to incorporating collaborative discussion, Wiki Ed and community-based service-learning projects into her course curriculum.
Dr. Isgro’s professional life outside of academia has included working with both the nonprofit sector and business communities, designing workshops and conferences, and implementing various marketing and activist strategies, which she readily shares with students as pertinent to course material. She is currently a board member for the national Academy of Communication in Healthcare. She also served on the Patient and Family Advisory Council for Vermont Children’s Hospital affiliated with the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Vt. for over seven years. She has worked with the Columbus (Ohio) Urban League, the National Assault Prevention Center, and the Ohio Coalition on Sexual Assault. She has served as an educational coordinator for the AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region (ASMR) and later coordinated professional workshops on gender and sexual health issues across New England for educators and health providers. In summer 2001, she worked with the International Women’s Tribune Centre (IWTC) in New York City as a research fellow, where she monitored and researched United Nations and non-governmental organization activity, particularly those focusing on HIV/AIDS and women and disarmament issues. She also participated in the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women 1995 in China and the 2005 follow-up session in New York City.
As a feminist communication scholar, Dr. Isgro’s research offers a robust and multifaceted insight on mothering and motherhood, the range of which reflects that of a savvy communication expert who looks at the way communicative processes constitute and impact lived realities at macro, micro, and meso levels of interaction. Dr. Isgro is the co-editor of the Mothers in Academia anthology that explores the ways in which women as mothers are reshaping the cultural and intellectual dynamics of higher education (Columbia University Press, 2013). Other publications include chapters in Communication and the Global Landscape of Faith, Women and Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric and Public Policy and Fundamentalisms and the Media: Histories, Mediations, and Locations. She also has journal articles in Women and Language, The European Journal of Cultural Studies, College Teaching, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Human Trafficking and Journal of Homosexuality. To read some of Dr. Isgro’s publications visit: https://plattsburgh.academia.edu/KirstenIsgro.
- Education
- Ph.D., University of Massachusetts at Amherst (2006)
- M.A., Ohio State University
- B.A., Ohio State University
- Teaching & Research Areas
- Professional Work