Faculty
Keith Berry
Professor & Associate Chair
CV
CONTACT INFORMATION
Email
Office: CIS 3046
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Keith Berry (PhD, Southern Illinois University) is a Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Communication. His research and teaching focus on the creative intersections of relational communication and cultural identity formation. He explores how conversation partners co-constitute, or jointly make and remake, identities within everyday social interaction and relationships. This includes the interactions that build and sustain communities and groups. While he uses and teaches a range of interpretive methods and worldviews, his primary interests lie in autoethnography, fieldwork, and phenomenology. His research primarily focuses on bullying, LGBTQ+ cultures and communication, and the relational nature of reflexivity in autoethnography and ethnography more broadly.
Dr. Berry is the co-author (with Joyce Hocker) of Interpersonal Conflict (McGraw Hill) and co-author (with Catherine M. Gillotti and Tony E. Adams) of Living Sexuality: Stories of LGBTQ Relationships, Identities, and Desires (2020, Brill/Sense). His solo-authored book Bullied: Tales of Torment, Identity, and Youth (2016, Routledge) received honors from the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, the Ethnography Division of the National Communication Association (NCA), and the Central States Communication Association. His forthcoming book (co-authored with Tony E. Adams), A Research Agenda for Autoethnography, will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2027. His research has also appeared in books such as The Cambridge Handbook of Identity and the Handbook of Autoethnography, and journals like Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Family Communication, Qualitative Inquiry, and Text & Performance Quarterly.
His most recent works explore queer joy and aging, the relational benefits of autoethnographic writing, and myths about autoethnography for the study of difference. Currently, he is working on his next solo-authored book on the role of reflexivity and mindfulness in autoethnography.
Dr. Berry is an inaugural member of the Board of Trustees of the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry (), past co-chair of NCA鈥檚 Anti-Bullying Task Force, and past chair of NCA鈥檚 Ethnography Division.
RESEARCH AREAS
Relational Communication, Culture, Identity, Bullying, Autoethnography, Reflexivity
RESEARCH clusters
Interpersonal and Relational Communication; Media, Culture, and Performance; Health Communication