Loreen Olson, Ph.D.

Communication Studies

Loreen Olson, Ph.D.

Professor

lnolson@uncg.edu
107 Ferguson Building
336-334-5297

Affiliate Faculty Member: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

Specializations: Gender, Family Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Dark Side of Close Relationships

Education

Ph.D., University of Nebraska, Lincoln
M.A., University of California, Davis
B.A., St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN

Scholarly Interests

  • Interpersonal, gender, and family communication
  • The dark side of family and close relationships
  • The communication of deviance
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Intimate Partner Violence related Traumatic Brain Injury
  • The luring communication of child sexual predators
  • Gendered violence
  • Identities on the margins

Courses Taught

  • CST 659: Communication and Gendered Communities
  • CST 612: Family Communication and Its Dark Side
  • CST 602:  Engaging Communication Research Methodology
  • CST 460: Dark Side of Relational Communication
  • CST 460:  Dark Side of Family Communication
  • CST 407: Gender and Communication
  • CST 415: Family Communication
  • CST 300: Communication Theory
  • CST 207:  Relational Communication

Scholarship and Scholarly Activity

Select Publications

Books

Olson, L. N. & Fine, M. A. (Eds.) (2016).  The darker side of family communication:   The harmful, the morally suspect, and the socially inappropriate.  New York:  Peter Lang.

Olson, L. N., Baoicchi-Wagner*, E., Wilson Kratzer*, J., & Symonds*, S. (2012).  The dark side of  family communication.  Cambridge, UK:  Polity Press.

Refereed Journal Articles:

Crowe, A., Murray, C., Mullen, P., Hunnicutt, G., Lundgren, K., & Olson, L. N. (in press).  Help seeking behaviors and intimate partner violence-related traumatic brain injury.  Violence and Gender.

Swartout, K. M., Flack, Jr., W. F., Cook, S. L., Olson, L. N., Smith, P. H., & White, J. W., (in press).  Measuring campus sexual misconduct and its context: The administrator-researcher campus climate consortium (ARC3) survey.  Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.

King, K., Murray, C. E., Crowe, A., Hunnicutt, G.**, Lundgren, K.**, & Olson, L.** (2017).  The costs of recovery: Intimate partner violence survivors’ experiences of financial recovery from abuse.  The Family Journal:  Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 25, 230-238.  doi: 10.1177/1066480717710656  **Authors listed in alphabetical order.

Hunnicut, G., Lundgren, K., Murray, C., & Olson, L. (2017).  The intersection of intimate partner violence and traumatic brain injury: A call for interdisciplinary research.  Journal of Family Violence, 32, 471-480,  doi 10.1007/s10896-016-9854-7

Baiocchi-Wagner*, E., & Olson, L. N. (2016).  Motherhood and family health advocacy in nutrition and exercise: “Doing the tradition.”  Journal of Family Communication, 128-143.
doi: 10.1080/15267431.2016.1146283

Murray, C. E., Lundgren, K., Olson, L. N., & Hunnicutt, G. (2016). Practice update: What professionals who are not brain injury specialists need to know about intimate partner violence-related traumatic brain injury. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 17, 298-305. doi:  10.1177/1524838015584364

Selection of Recent Book Chapters/Encyclopedia Entries:

Olson, L. N., & Schwartzman, R. (submitted).  Child sexual predators’ luring communication goes online: Reflections and future directions.  In E. Downs (Ed.), Dark Side of Media & Technology: A 21st Century Guide to Media & Technological Literacy.  New York:  Peter Lang.

Olson, L. N. & Donahey, A. (2018).  Four horsemen of the apocalypse:  A framework for understanding family conflict.  In D. O. Braithwaite, E. Suter, & K. Floyd (Eds.), Engaging theories in family communication:  Multiple perspectives (2nd ed.).  New York:  Taylor & Francis/Routledge.

Olson, L. N. (2017).   Grounded theory. In J. P. Matthes, C. S. Davis, & R. F. Potter (Eds.), International  encyclopedia of communication research methods. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell Malden, MA:  Wiley-Blackwell.  doi: 10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs425

Olson, L. N., & Socha, T. J. (2016). Journal of family communication. In C. Sheehan (Ed.), The Wiley  Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies.  Malden, MA:  Wiley-Blackwell.

Olson, L. N. (2016).  The dark underbelly of communication competence:  How something good can be bad?  In A. F. Hannawa & B. H. Spitzberg (Eds.), Communication competence:  Handbook of communication science (Vol, 22) (pp. 657-682).  Boston, MA:  de Gruyter Mouton.

Social Activities

Discipline Service:

Journal Editorial Board Membership

  • Journal of Family Communication
  • Journal of Applied Communication

National Communication Association

  • Member, National Communication Association’s Anti-Harassment Task Force
  • Past Chair, Interpersonal Communication Division’s Nominating Committee
  • Past Chair, Family Communication Division
  • Past Member, NCA’s Nominating Committee

Campus and University Service

  • Immediate Past Director of Graduate Study, Department of Communication
  • Affiliate Faculty Member, Women & Gender Studies
  • Linda Carlisle Research Grant committee, Women & Gender Studies
  • Sexual Misconduct Prevention Programming Task Force (Student Health)
  • Coordinator, Violence Prevention Network of Guilford County, UNCG’s Center for Women’s Health & Wellness
  • A & S Promotion & Tenure Committee
  • Title IX Policy Team, Office of the Chancellor
  • UNCG Faculty Government Committee, an At-Large Committee of the Faculty Senate
  • UNCG Tuition Committee
  • A & S Representative—Honors Council of Lloyd International Honors College
  • Search Committee Member for New Media/Emerging Technologies Faculty position in CST

Recently Supervised Student Research

  • Charles Brewer
  • Jenny Southard
  • Linda Jaber
  • Kary Peters
  • Justine Eriksen
  • Natasha Williams

Community Training/Workshops

  • Hunnicut, G., Lundgren, K., Murray, C., & Olson, L. N. (April, 2017).  Intimate partner violence related traumatic brain injury:  A free workshop for community stake holders.  This workshop is part of a research study that focuses on ways in which risk of TBI can be identified in this population.
  • Hunnicut, G., Lundgren, K., Murray, C., & Olson, L. N. (Nov. 2015). Battering and traumatic brain injury:  Implications for service providers.  Workshop sponsored by the Guilford County Violence Prevention Network with support from the Department of Communication Studies, UNCG.