New Faculty Hires
We are pleased to announce that Susan Fussell, Lee Humphreys and Jeff Niederdeppe will be joining the faculty of Communication in 2008 (Fall).
Susan Fussell received her BS degree in psychology and sociology from Tufts University in 1981, and her Ph.D. in social and cognitive psychology from Columbia University in 1990 under the guidance of Robert Krauss. She was an NIMH post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University from 1990 to 1992, where she worked with Sam Glucksberg on social dimensions of figurative language use. In addition, Susan held positions at Bell Communications Research, Mississippi State University, and AT&T Laboratories. Susan’s primary interests lie in the areas of computer-supported cooperative work and computer-mediated communication. Her current projects include developing video systems to support remote collaboration, understanding and supporting large scale collaboration across multiple teams and projects, devising metrics to evaluate the health benefits of online support chatrooms, and investigating the effects of culture on computer-mediated communication. She has published numerous papers in the areas of social psychology, computer-supposed cooperative work and related disciplines, and is the editor of two books, The Verbal Communication of Emotions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), and, with Roger Kreuz, Social and Cognitive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998).
Jeff Niederdeppe received his doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. He received a BA in communication from the University of Arizona in May 1999 and an MA in communication from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2001. Jeff spent two years at RTI International, a not-for-profit research firm, before returning to Penn to complete his Ph.D. His research explores the effects of mass media campaigns and health news coverage on health behavior and policy. Much of his published work has focused on the effectiveness of large-scale anti-tobacco campaigns and anti-drug media campaigns. Specifically, he has tested how various combinations of audio-visual features can enhance anti-tobacco message effectiveness, explored cognitive pathways between anti-tobacco campaign exposure and behavior change, and examined the role of news coverage in shaping tobacco control policy. His dissertation examines how existing health knowledge, social integration, and media use patterns moderate cancer-related news coverage effects on health behaviors. As a Health & Society Scholar, Jeff plans to combine insights from social epidemiology and health communication to study how social capital and community structural characteristics enhance, impede, and/or interact with health media messages to explain growing health disparities in the US. In turn, he plans to use this knowledge to develop media campaign and media advocacy strategies aimed at changing structural and social determinants of health through policy change.
Lee Humphreys received her doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. She received a BS in communication from Cornell University in 1999 and an MA in communication from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. She is interested in the social uses and effects of technology. She studies how people use new communication technology in social interaction. Some past research projects have explored the social norms of cellphone use in public spaces, the use of digital photos on online dating sites, and the role of technology in singles bars. In her dissertation, she examined mobile social interaction and new social networking practices in public spaces. She is also interested in the use of technology in new methodological approaches such as the use of digital photography in fieldwork and computerized textual analysis. She co-edited a book with Dr. Paul Messaris that explores the various ways that digital media are changing human communication (Peter Lang, 2006).
