Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock, associate professor of communication studies, was formally honored with the award for Best Ethnographic Journal Article by the National Communication Association at the NCA’s annual meeting in Philadelphia in November.

“Narrative Performance Research: Co-Storying “Almost Passing,” was originally published in the Departures in Critical Qualitative Research journal in 2015. “Ethnography” is research that describes a culture, while ethnographers investigate cultural meanings and practices through observation and interviews.

“Through this auto-ethnographic essay, I explore how a critical qualitative researcher's disclosure of her personal reactions to participants’ narratives can offer an opportunity to resist cultural marginalization,” said Scott-Pollock. She explains that this requires a level of vulnerability and disclosure that can feel risky but is often necessary in the pursuit of identification and transformative understanding in daily performance.

“Scott-Pollock’s article is exceptionally well-written and superlative in all aspects,” one reviewer noted. “But its greatest merit comes from disrupting the apparent dichotomy of the researcher and researched. She productively disturbs this binary and exposes intersections between these elements of ethnographic research.”

Scott-Pollock received the UNCW Distinguished Award for Scholarly Engagement and Public Service in 2015 and was recognized as a “Woman to Watch” in Education by Wilma Magazine. She was also nominated by the Wilmington YWCA as a 2015 Woman of Achievement.

Scott-Pollock earned a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Maine. She teaches courses in performance studies, storytelling and qualitative research methods. A faculty member at UNCW since 2010, she also directs the UNCW Storytellers and Hawk Tale Players, two UNCW performance troupes that perform in K-8 classrooms.

-- Caroline Cropp

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