Brandi Lawless

Brandi Lawless is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies. Broadly, her research can be defined as critical intercultural communication — an area of research concerned with understanding power, privilege, marginalization, hegemony, and ideologies. She is interested in the ways individuals (re)produce and communicate identities and subjectivities at the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and other aspects of identity. Her most recent work has explored intercultural communication pedagogies, the experiences of female immigrant faculty, and emotional labor for women faculty.

• Critical intercultural communication
• Intersections of race and class
• Conflict and alliance building
• Identities and subjectivities
• Critical communication pedagogy

• Editor, Communication Teacher

• PhD, Communication, University of New Mexico
• MA, Communication Studies, San Francisco State University
• BA, California State University, Northridge

• Distinguished Research Award, University of San Francisco, 2023
• Community Engaged Learning Teaching Award, University of San Francisco, 2023
• Distinguished Teaching Award, Western States Communication Association, 2023
• National Communication Association Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teaching in Higher Education, 2022
• Exemplary Teacher Award, Communication and Instruction Interest Group, Western States Communication Association, 2020
• Top Paper, Western States Communication Association – Health Communication Interest Group, 2020
• Top Four Paper, International Communication Association – Intercultural Communication Division, 2019
• Top Four Paper, International Communication Association – Intercultural Communication Division, 2018
• Feminist Scholar Award, Organization for Research on Women and Communication, 2017
• Top Four Paper, Western States Communication Association – Intercultural Communication Interest Group, 2017
• Top Three Paper, Western States Communication Association – Intercultural Communication Interest Group, 2016
• Distinguished Teaching Award, University of San Francisco, 2016
• The Innovation in Teaching with Technology Award, University of San Francisco, 2015

• Cole, K. L., & Lawless, B. (2023). “Narrating the (in)visibility of Crohn’s Disease and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Re-evaluating structural and psycho-emotional disablism during COVID-19.” Disability & Society.

• Lawless, B. (2023). Performing enactments of resistance to academic neoliberalization: Quiet quitting as educational transgression and sustainability. Communication Education, 72(3), 316-319. 

• Lawless, B., & Chen, Y-W. (2021). What COVID-19 taught us about pedagogy and social justice—pandemic or not. Journal of Communication Pedagogy, 5, 4-10. 

• Lawless, B., & Chen, Y-W. (2021). Teaching Social Justice: Critical Tools for the Intercultural Communication Classroom. Rowman and Littlefield.

• Lawless, B. (2021). Neoliberal multiculturalism on college campuses: Fostering a critical understanding of diversity. Communication Teacher.
• Lawless, B., & Chen, Y-W. (2021). Teaching Social Justice: Critical Tools for the Intercultural Communication Classroom. Rowman and Littlefield.
• Lawless, B., & Cole, K. L. (2021). Troll tracking: Examining rhetorical circulation of anti-intellectual ideologies in right-wing media attacks. Communication, Culture, & Critique, 14(1), 149-165.
• Lawless, B., & Chen, Y-W. (2020). Still a ‘sensitive’ subject? Assessing the strengths and struggles of intercultural communication pedagogy. Howard Journal of Communications, 31(2), 171-186.
• Lawless, B. (2018). Documenting a labor of love: Emotional labor as academic labor. Review of Communication, 18(2), 85-97.