E-mail: dbraithwaite@unl.edu

Dawn O. Braithwaite, University of Minnesota, Communication Studies, is a Willa Cather Professor and Department Chair of the Communication Studies Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research is centered in how those in personal and family relationships communicate and negotiate family transitions and challenges. She focuses on understudied and discourse dependent families, studying how family members communicate and negotiate personal identity, communication rituals (routines and traditions) and struggles in the context of stepfamilies and voluntary (fictive) kin. 

Dr. Braithwaite is the author of over 90 articles in journals and chapters in scholarly books. Her six books include: Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication and Engaging Theories in Family Communication (both with Leslie Baxter, Sage Publications); Family communication: Cohesion and change (9th Edition, with Kathleen Galvin and Carma Bylund, Pearson); the Handbook of Communication and People with Disabilities (with Teresa Thompson, Erlbaum); and Casing Interpersonal Communication: Case Studies in Personal and Social Relationships (with Julia T. Wood, Kendall Hunt). She was awarded the National Communication Association's Brommel Award for Outstanding Scholarship/Service in Family Communication in 2006 and the UNL College of Arts & Sciences Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Achievement in the Social Sciences in 2002. 

Dr. Braithwaite is a Past President of the National Communication Association and has directed the Association's Research Board. She served on the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Social Science Associations in Washington DC.