Michael Barnes, M.A.

Research Focus: Interpersonal & Organizational Communication

Michael Barnes (M.A., San Diego State University) is an interpersonal & organizational scholar hailing from Northern California. After earning an Associates degree in graphic design and behavioral science from Santa Rosa Junior college, Barnes returned to higher ed to earn a bachelors degree in communication with an emphasis in social advocacy from Humboldt State University. At HSU, Barnes helped to start the Homeless Student Advocate Alliance, a student-led club, which successfully lobbied for various policy changes on campus; including creating a 24 hour safe study space for students and developing a community housing liaison position. His research efforts at HSU focused on creating narrative and reflexive accounts of student homelessness in order to create policy change. 

Barnes continued to study poverty from diverse paradigmatic perspectives in the masters of communication program at San Diego State University. Specifically, he has explored how economic hardship influences relationship maintenance behaviors among families of undergraduate students using quantitative analysis; while offering narrative and critical accounts of how people experiencing poverty subvert neoliberal and democratic discourses. Future directions for research at Ohio University are to continue building a body of work centered on class disparities from a mixed methodological perspective.
 

Pronouns: he/him