Liz Gardner

Liz Gardner, Ph.D.

I'm a former nomad, with stories from North Carolina, Atlanta, Austin, Missouri, and now Lubbock to share. Teaching and research (and cupcakes) truly are my passions, and I look forward to working with students who share that same virtue/curse.

My research focuses on strategic health communication, primarily health message design and resistance to persuasion, with the ultimate goal of designing communication to help people make smarter health decisions. I am particularly interested in developing health communication for underserved populations. My research interests also include media psychology, applications of public relations in nonprofit and health-related contexts, health literacy, and gendered representations in the mass media.

My pre-academic background includes a variety of public relations roles. I have worked as a public relations assistant in a mid-sized hospital, as a communications intern for the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science, as a member of the health care team of Porter Novelli Public Relations in Atlanta, and as a marketing associate and technical writer for a software consulting firm, also in Atlanta. Before coming to Texas Tech, I taught courses in strategic communication and research methods and worked as a research assistant at the University of Missouri.

Seltzer, T., Gardner, E., Bichard, S., & Callison, C. (2012). PR in the ER: Managing internal organization–public relationships in a hospital emergency department. Public Relations Review, 38(1), 128-136.

Gardner, E., & Leshner, G. (2011, May). The role of narrative and other-referencing in attenuating psychological reactance to diabetes self-care messages. Paper presented at the International Communication Association annual conference, Health Communication Division, Boston. (chosen as a Top Paper)

Leshner, G., & Gardner, E. (2011). Health communication. Oxford Bibliographies Online. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/

Gardner, E. (2007). Is there method to the madness? Worldwide press coverage of female terrorists and journalistic attempts to rationalize their involvement. Journalism Studies, 8(6), 909-929.