Keynote Speaker

Dr. Tamara D. Afifi, University of California, Santa Barbara

Tamara Afifi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She joined the communication faculty in the fall of 2006 after five years at Penn State University.  She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1999.  Most of  her research focuses on how family members cope communicatively with
the challenges they face throughout the divorce process.  When examining her research program more broadly, however, two themes emerge:  (1) information regulation (privacy, secrets, disclosure, avoidance) in parent-child and dating relationships, with particular emphasis on post-divorce families, and (2) communication processes related to uncertainty, loss, stress and coping in families.  In addition to being one of the few communication scholars who studies post-divorce families, what often separates her work from other scholars is her triangulation of data or the incorporation of a variety of methodological approaches to study a particular phenomenon. 
       
Professor Afifi has published over fifty articles/chapters in numerous national and international outlets, including Human Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, the Journal of Marriage and Family, and the Journal of Adolescent Research.  She had a recent book published by Rutledge with her husband and colleague, Walid Afifi, on Uncertainty and Information Regulation in Interpersonal Contexts:  Theories and Applications.  She has also published several book chapters, including a chapter for the Handbook of Divorce and Relationship Dissolution and a chapter for the International handbook of stepfamilies:  Policy and practice in legal, research, and clinical spheres.  She has received 23 top paper awards from various international and national communication conferences.  She also received the Franklin Knower Article Award in 2004 from the Interpersonal Communication Division of National Communication Association and the Distinguished Article Award from the Family Communication Division of NCA in 2008.  In addition, she was the recipient of the Young Scholar Award from the International Communication Association in 2006.  As a final indicator of publishing, in an article by Bunz (2005) in the Journal of Communication, she was listed as the most published assistant professor in the top tier national and international communication journals. 

Professor Afifi is also very passionate about her teaching.  She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in family communication, interpersonal communication, conflict management, and research methods.  She has also been nominated for, and received, several teaching awards, including the 2009 UCSB Faculty Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, which is a university-wide award for distinguished teaching among tenured faculty.

“Caught in the middle”:  The impact of divorce and interparental conflict on adolescents’ and young adults’ well-being will examine the impact of divorce and parents’ conflict on adolescents’ and young adults’ physical and mental health, as well as their relationship with their parents and their own romantic relationships later in life.