Kristen Alley Swain is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. Her research focuses on science and risk communication, with an emphasis on framing and social amplification of risk in news coverage about health and environmental issues. Her recent grant work has explored crisis communication strategies, big data analysis of misleading health news and natural disasters, scientific explanation in controversial stories, HIV prevention in black churches, and public communication about climate change, environmental justice, bioterrorism and toxic freight spills.
Graham D. Bodie
Graham Bodie is a scholar, an educator, and a consultant. In each of these roles, he attempts to bring attention to one fundamentally important yet undervalued skill: listening.
Bodie is an internationally recognized expert on listening and has published over 80 monographs, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. His most recent project, The Sourcebook of Listening Research, is a comprehensive resource that reviews and critiques current and potential approaches to measuring listening. Bodie’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, and on National Public Radio. In addition to several research awards, he was honored twice with Professor of the Year by students in the Department of Communication Studies at Louisiana State University, where he also was recognized with university-wide teaching awards. When he consults, he prefers projects that allow him to make a difference. Currently, Bodie serves as an executive advisor for the Listen First Project and Vice Chairperson for the Global Listening Centre.
Bodie received his bachelor’s and master’s in Communication from Auburn University and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. In addition to LSU, he also served as a visiting scholar in the School of Media and Communication at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea. He is currently on faculty in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi.
Desiree Henley
Professor Hensley is an associate professor of law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. She received a bachelor’s in classics and letters from the University of Oklahoma, pursued graduate work in Near Eastern studies at Yale University, and earned a Juris Doctor from Georgetown Law Center. She was a Public Interest Law Scholar while at Georgetown and after graduation served as an Equal Justice Works Fellow for Bread for the City in Washington, D.C., where she provided legal services to low-income tenants. She later practiced real property and estate planning law in D.C. with the Law Offices of Quinn O’Connell.
Hensley teaches property and real estate and is currently the director of the Low-Income Housing Clinic. Her teaching and scholarly interests include fair housing, land tenure and security, landlord tenant law, affordable housing policy, and substantive and procedural due process rights in adult protective proceedings. Her article “Out in the Cold: The Failure of Tenant Enforcement of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit” appeared in the University of Cincinnati Law Review in 2014. Her recent article, “Due Process is Not Optional: Mississippi Conservatorship Proceedings Fall Short on Basic Due Process Protections for Elderly and Disabled Adults,” appeared in the Mississippi Law Journal in 2017. Professor Hensley is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and in Mississippi.
Daphne S. Cain
Daphne S. Cain earned a bachelor’s in psychology with a minor in Women’s Studies from North Carolina State University in 1992, a master of social work with an emphasis in mental health from East Carolina University in 1995, and a doctor of philosophy in social work from the University of Tennessee in 2002. Cain is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in marriage and family therapy. Prior to Cain’s current appointment as chair of the Department of Social Work at the University of Mississippi, she was a faculty member and administrator for the LSU School of Social Work from 2001 to 2014. Cain has secured $7.6 million dollars in grants and contracts to support her research interests including disaster mental health, child welfare, and religion or spirituality and social work practice.
Kate M. Centellas
Kate McGurn Centellas received her Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2008. She is a Croft Institute for International Studies associate professor of anthropology and Latin American studies and associate chair in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi. Her work focuses on state-level science, technology, and medical projects, primarily in Bolivia, where she has conducted fieldwork since the early 2000s. She argues that the implementation of scientific research and medical innovation in places like La Paz, Bolivia, is epistemiologically relevant – it is often sites outside of the centers of scientific research where innovation emerges.
Centellas’s current research examines the development and launch of a Bolivian-Chinese satellite and the implementation of an ambitious telehealth project using satellite bandwidth. The goal of this project is to provide telehealth coverage in every municipality, a challenging social and technical problem considering the tremendous geographic and cultural diversity of Bolivia. She collaborates closely with Bolivian institutions, community members, and stakeholders. Centellas additionally works with the School of Population Health at the University of Mississippi Medical Center to strengthen partnerships between Bolivia and Mississippi so practitioners, community members, and scholars can learn from the experiences of telemedicine in each location.
Centellas also co-directs a social science methods field school in La Paz, Bolivia, in the summers. She closely involves students in hands-on research design and implementation via the field school and emphasizes the importance of community partnerships and collaboration via experiential international learning.