I study how people negotiate their roles, relationships, and power in organizations through communication. When conducting research, I am particularly sensitive to the tensions at play between different types of members in faith-based and nonprofit settings- for example, paid staff and volunteers. The goal of my research is to increase our understandings of different membership experiences and develop theories of organizational socialization and identification that apply to a broader range of organizational memberships and contexts. I am currently examining the relationships between nonprofit employees and volunteers, as well as how ethereal concepts like faith and intuition are communicatively constructed in organizations and to what ends.
