Research Associate

Jennifer Vardeman-Winter is an associate professor in the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston. She is the director of graduate studies and an affiliate faculty member in UH’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.

Vardeman-Winter teaches public relations and issues management, and she researches the intersection of communication campaigns, publics (particularly women), power and culture, and health/crisis/risk. Recently, she’s examined the ethics and moral obligations of strategic communicators, governments, and corporations, particularly regarding the policies that affect marginalized communities. She was funded in 2013-2014 by the Arthur W. Page Center at Penn State University to study ethics in health public relations as well as the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs to communicate about affordable multifamily housing.

She is also active in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, particularly with the Public Relations Division, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), and the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication. Within AEJMC, Vardeman-Winter recently served as Professional Freedom and Responsibility chair for the Public Relations Division and the CSW. She currently serves as CSW’s Research Chair and as a member of AEJMC’s Equity & Diversity Award Advisory Committee. She’s also a fellow with the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication, where she has served as a research associate for the Center’s benchmark study, The Status of Women in Communication, particularly in analyzing current trends in the public relations field.

At UH, Vardeman-Winter serves on the University Commission on Women, the ADVANCE Committee (NSF-funded), and the Health Professions Advisory Committee. She is an editorial board member of the Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Inquiry, and Public Relations Journal.

Previously, Vardeman-Winter worked as a public relations practitioner in the high-tech and public health industries. She earned her Ph.D. in communication from the University of Maryland in 2008.