This domain name will soon expire, the new website will be here.

I am a qualitative research methodologist & technologist, specializing in the analysis of online conversations and use of digital tools and spaces in research design. I am co-author of Doing Qualitative Research in a Digital World (Sage, 2021), Looking for Insight, Transformation and Learning in Online Talk (Routledge, 2019), and Digital Tools for Qualitative Research (Sage, 2014).

I have been a certified professional trainer for ATLAS.ti for several versions now, and I am an affiliate of Indiana University’s Center for Computer-Mediated Communication.

My first formal teaching experience was as an English teacher in Lesotho, Southern Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer. One of my favorite parts of the experience was learning to speak Sesotho and the opportunity to travel to Swaziland, South Africa, Botswana, Madagascar and Zimbabwe.

When I returned to the States I earned a Master of Arts degree in applied linguistics from Ohio University. While there, I taught English as a second language as a graduate teaching assistant and won the outstanding teaching assistant award. I later published findings from my Master’s thesis in the Journal of Second Language Writing. (Effective teamwork, collaboration, and peer feedback have been an interest of mine from way back.)

After finishing my Master’s program I completed a two year internship with the English Language Center at Michigan State University, during which I taught intensive English and academic English classes for international students. I then moved back to Indiana, my home state, to pursue my Ph.D. in Instructional Systems Technology, minoring in computer-mediated communication, at Indiana University.

From 2003-2014 I was an assistant and tenured associate professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, serving as the coordinator of the qualitative research methods graduate certificate program, facilitating the Discourse Analysis Research Team, and helping to design and re-launch the instructional design Master’s program as an award-winning fully online program. It was during this phase of my career that I co-authored my first book, Digital Tools for Qualitative Research.

In 2014, I was recruited by the University of Georgia to join their qualitative research program as a tenured full professor. Until 2019 I taught a variety of qualitative research courses in face-to-face, online and blended learning environments, including workshops on ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software. During this time I also finished my second book, Looking for Insight, Transformation, and Learning in Online Talk.

East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee is now home where I am a professor in the department of Sociology & Anthropology. I served as Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities from 2020-22 and as a Provost Academy Scholar in 2022. My co-author and I finished my third book, Doing Qualitative Research in a Digital World, during the pandemic, a moment in which shifts to digital research methods became of the utmost importance to everyone, not just the early adopters.

I consult and provide workshops on the use of digital tools in a variety of qualitative research contexts in the USA and abroad. I am particularly excited to be headed to Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan Poland as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2023. International experiences have always been a priority for me. Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to facilitate professional development programs at South East European University in Macedonia and for the University of Alabama in Quito, Ecuador.

After work and on the weekends I live to be outdoors – running, hiking, backpacking, gardening and biking. I have worked as a trail guide in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, served as an Appalachian Trail maintainer, coordinated a monthly hiking group for women, and was a founding member of Girls Outside. I have been to every continent except Antarctica, which is unlikely to change given the impact of tourism.