Staff Spotlight: Laura Black

The Heravi Peace Institute is thrilled to welcome Professor Laura Black as the newest member of our Core Faculty!

Laura is a Professor of Professional Practice in Communication. She is an engaged scholar-practitioner who helps groups ethically address difficult, divisive issues in ways that integrate interests and values of different stakeholder groups. She is fundamentally interested in strengthening democracy by improving our ability to communicate well and collaborate across lines of difference.

As a peace and conflict practitioner, she helps people listen deeply, build shared understanding, make decisions deliberatively, and create inclusive organizations and communities. Laura designs and facilitates meetings using dialogue techniques and leads training sessions on conflict management, facilitating difficult conversations, and inclusive peacebuilding.

Laura is also a leading communication scholar in dialogue, deliberation, and group facilitation. Her published research includes studies of how people in deliberative discussions manage their disagreements by telling and responding to personal stories; what communication practices facilitators and conflict mediators use to promote deep listening, engagement, and civil disagreement; how facilitators deal with the emotion work of difficult moments; and the role of dialogue and deliberation in peacebuilding and social change. Laura served as the editor of the Journal of Deliberative Democracy for five years and was one of the founding officers of the National Communication Association’s Public Dialogue and Deliberation Division. She is currently on the board for the Healthy Democracy, a nonprofit organization that builds healthy democratic systems through civic assemblies that elevate the voices of everyday people in public decision making. 

Laura holds a master’s and Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Washington. Prior to coming to USU, Laura was a tenured full professor in Communication Studies at Ohio University and a core faculty in Organizational Development and Change at Fielding Graduate University.

To contact Professor Black, send a message to laura.black@usu.edu.