rom that body of work, Dr. Connaughton has developed what she calls the Local Leadership Model of political violence prevention and the Relationally Attentive Approach to doing engaged scholarship (i.e., academic-practitioner political violence prevention collaborations). Central to all of this work is helping to inspire everyday citizens to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, effective communicators, and leaders as they work together to address issues that affect their communities.
Dr. Connaughton’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, LASER PULSE/USAID, the Carnegie Corporation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Motor Company, and the Indiana Department of Transportation, and she has secured more than $3 million in gift funds. Dr. Connaughton served as a thought leader on distributed leadership for the U.S. Army Research Institute’s Leader Development Unit. She was a consultant to USAID’s Liberia Strategic Analysis program where she led the development of a mentorship program and leadership curriculum designed to develop the next generation of Liberian leaders. She has been invited to present her research on virtual teams and leadership to industry, military, and higher educational audiences, and has facilitated workshops and written guidebooks in the areas of virtual teams, leadership, teambuilding, strategic planning, and effective communication in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Dr. Connaughton teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in qualitative research methods, leadership, and political violence prevention. She is the recipient of several teaching awards, Purdue’s 2017 Faculty Engaged Scholar Award, the 2020 Purdue Provost’s Graduate Mentor Award, and Purdue’s 2018 Trailblazer Award – an award given to a midcareer tenured faculty member for innovation and impact in research. Dr. Connaughton is the Editor of Frontiers in Communication’s Organizational Communication section, she was the Associate Editor of the Journal of Communication and she currently serves on several Editorial Boards. Dr. Connaughton has served as the Associate Head and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue and as the Associate Chair of Purdue University’s Social Sciences Institutional Review Board.
