Michelle Gibbons

Michelle Gibbons is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. She earned a B.A. in English from Vassar College (2000), an M.A. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2007), and a Ph.D. in Communication, also from the University of Pittsburgh (2010). She joined the University of New Hampshire in 2016, after holding a postdoctoral fellowship in digital pedagogy at Georgia Tech followed by a faculty position at SUNY Delhi in upstate New York. Her research interests include rhetorical theory and criticism, the rhetoric of science, technology and medicine, vernacular public discourse and the digital humanities. Her work has been published in journals that include Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Technical Communication Quarterly, Philosophy of Science, Journalism History, and Argumentation and Advocacy, among others. In 2015, her article “Beliefs about the Mind as Doxastic Inventional Resource: Freud, Neuroscience, and the Case of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care” won the Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology’s Article of the Year Award. Dr. Gibbons’s current research project investigates the rhetorical deployment of commonsense psychological beliefs in public culture. At UNH, she teaches courses that include Propaganda and Persuasion, Rhetorical Theory and Criticism, and Digital Rhetoric.