Professor of Communication
University of Cincinnati
Gail Fairhurst is a Professor at the University of Cincinnati and a top scholar in organizational communication, leadership, and organizational discourse analysis. Much of her work challenges traditional and psychological studies of leadership through a social constructionist, discursive lens. Her three books and over 60 articles and chapters introduce framing, discourse, and meaning-centered perspectives to an area dominated by individual traits and cognitive concerns. Her work is grounded in the study of routine communicative practices and demonstrates how leadership surfaces through a network of human activities.
For this work, she received the 2007 and 1997 "Best Book" Awards from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association (NCA); the 2005 "Best Article" Award from the International Communication Association (ICA); two additional “Best Article Awards” from NCA’s Organizational Communication Division (1994 and 2002); and several top paper honors at national and international conferences. Her work is widely cited both inside and outside of the field of Communication.
As a leading scholar in interdisciplinary and international circles, Prof. Fairhurst has presented keynote addresses in Europe and Australia at management, business communication, and organizational communication conferences. In 2010, she will be a Visiting Scholar at Copenhagen Business School. In 2009, she received a Fulbright Award to visit the School of Economics and Management, Lund University in Sweden. She also received the 2003 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Research from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati and the 1999 Outstanding Member Award from the ICA Organizational Communication Division.