Dr. Barbara Barnett

I've been writing my entire professional life.

I began my career as a journalist at The Charlotte News and The Charlotte Observer in my home state of North Carolina. I reported on health care and the legislature, and I wrote editorials.

I later worked as a health communicator for the N.C. Hospital Association, where I developed public relations plans and strategies.

Later I worked with Family Health International (FHI), a nonprofit organization that conducted social science and biomedical research on women's health, AIDS, and family planning. This job gave me a chance to travel around the world, to work with women and men in developing countries, and write about how important health care is for an individual's quality of life and the community's welfare.

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I have worked in Africa (Zimbabwe, Kenya), Asia (Philippines, Thailand), the Caribbean (Jamaica, Costa Rica), and the Middle East (Egypt).

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I now teach journalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, in the United States. I teach reporting, diversity in the media, among other courses.

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My research has focused on gender, media, and violence. I have studied media coverage of women as perpetrators of violence, as victims and survivors of violence, and as witnesses to violence. My work has been published in Feminist Media Studies, Women and Language, and Communication, Culture and Critique. I'm the author of Motherhood in the Media: Infanticide, Journalism, and the Digital Age, which has been recently published in paperback by Routledge.

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I have experience in qualitative research, public relations strategic planning, writing and editing. 

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A few personal details: I grew up at the beach, I am a military kid, I love dogs.

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