Michael Rodrigue-Barnes, M.A.
Research Focus: Organizational Communication
Michael Rodrigue-Barnes (M.A., San Diego State University) explores questions concerning how people, like himself, make sense of trauma, stigma, activism, and organizing through narrative and critical reflexivity. In this way, his research interests are responsive to the cultural and organizational contexts in which he is immersed. For example, his dissertation project, “Writing/writing Like My Life Depends on It,” explores what it means to have a graffiti identity and how that identity is negotiated in organizational settings. This work, in addition to other manuscripts he has presented at national conferences, crystallizes autoethnographic and critical-qualitative methodologies to create evocative and collaborative accounts of communicative phenomena. Michael's work is guided by post-structural and decolonial sensibilities, which invite him to consider how research can be applied to the communities with whom he does research for their benefit. Accordingly, his research often incorporates drawing, painting, poetry, and storytelling alongside traditional ethnographic techniques like responsive interviewing and textual analysis to provide layered accounts.
Pronouns: he/him