معرفی
Laurel Friedman serves as an Associate Professor of Instruction and Director of the Internship Program within the Department of Communication, with office location CIS 3033. She additionally directs the Mellon Humanities Internship Program and oversees departmental internship resources.
Her research expertise spans Critical Health Communication, Qualitative Methods, and Visual Culture, situated within Health Communication and Interpersonal and Relational Communication clusters. As a trained photographer with interdisciplinary critical communication studies training, Friedman examines evolving discourses and practices shaping illness and disease across historical and geographical contexts. Her current scholarship investigates tuberculosis control in Southern California through ethnographic observation of public health infrastructures, analyzing tensions between globally mandated protocols and local agency efforts while centering marginalized community experiences often excluded from health policy discussions.
Friedman's work identifies possibilities for inclusive disease control measures that transcend formal protocols by integrating community perspectives into public health practice, bridging visual culture methodologies with critical health communication frameworks to challenge exclusionary systems.
