Danielle Biss, M.A.

Fall 2020 Cohort

Specializations: Organizational Communication, Health Communication, Tension-Centered Organizing, Emotion Work, Qualitative Methods

Danielle C. Biss (M.A., San Diego State University) is a doctoral student in communication studies in the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. As an organizational communication scholar, Danielle is dedicated to community-engaged research and values partnering with health-based organizations to offer applied interventions to inequalities and social problems. She embodies an intellectual curiosity to understand how health-based organizations communicatively respond to oppression and trauma—whether through their careers or personal lives—by caring for, tending to, and responsibly guiding others who are struggling.

Danielle's research draws on interpretive-critical metatheoretical approaches and reflects a commitment to community-engaged praxis that is guided by principles of inclusion, equity, and justice. Guided by these principles, her work employs qualitative research methods, as the questions she asks are best addressed through semi-structured interviewing, participant observation, and ethnographic fieldwork. Over the last four years, she has developed a trajectory of research that has two practical aims, which include: (a) framing tension management as a pathway to advocacy for marginalized communities and (b) emotional management as a foundation for organizational flourishing.

Currently, Danielle's recent work has focused on the context of rural emergency services. During her coursework at OU, she has completed qualitative projects in partnership with local emergency services organizations. Projects have explored topics such as structuration theory and positive deviance, professional facework and emotional labor, emotional vulnerability and mental health, wellness and critical incidents, and tension-centered organizing in rural emergency services. Danielle’s work can be found in the Journal of Applied Communication Research, Women’s Studies and Communication, Southern Communication Journal, and Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research.