About Me:

June - August 2008:
Visiting Research Assistant at the Institute for Creative Technologies

I am currently a doctoral candidate in the rhetoric and professional communication program at New Mexico State University. My research goals are to enhance the understanding of Human-to-Human Communication and Interaction in Virtual Worlds by addressing how intercultural, online and professional rhetorical contexts may impact the use of virtual agents to communicate.

While traditional approaches to communication stress efficiency and medium leniency, many of our interactions (among which those done in virtual worlds) are highly rhetorical acts motivated by human interests and goals. In using virtual embodied agents (avatars) to communicate, humans use a metaphoric representation of their real-world self to further their own ends, which also affects verbal and non-verbal communication and performance. Given the importance of non-verbal communication gestures in face-to-face conversation, how does the use of non-verbal communication (such as gestures, body language, eye gaze) through an avatar impact rhetorical situations when people argue for a particular outcome? When a dyadic negotiation requires people come to a solution in virtual world, how do those people use their avatar to convince someone else?

My research interests are specifically related to the area of the rhetoric of virtual environments:

• Rhetoric of HCI: Negotiation/Persuasion Tactics in Virtual contexts

• Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication

• Proxemics and Deictics

• Gesturing

• Virtual Worlds and Video Games