The prestigious annual Doctoral Honors Seminar, hosted by the National Communication Association (NCA), brings together “promising doctoral students and distinguished faculty members from across the discipline and around the nation to present work and discuss current topics in communication.” A highly selective event, this year the NCA only invited 30 students chosen from a national pool of candidates. Among those invited is SC&I doctoral student Sabrina Singh.
“It's a privilege to be able to attend the DHS,” Singh said, “because the process is competitive in that only 30 students are chosen overall from Ph.D. programs across the country and only 10 students for the communication research seminar. It's an honor to know that the committee valued my dissertation and my research program as whole enough to select me to attend.”
The DHS will be held from June 17-20, 2025 at the University of Tennessee. The theme of this year’s event is, “Hills, Hollers, and Rising Scholars: The Future of Communication Research,” and, the NCA wrote, “it will offer mentors and students the exciting opportunity to engage in research development, discuss professional development, and have fun in the heart of the Smoky Mountains.”
SC&I Associate Professor of Communication Lisa Mikesell, who is Singh’s Ph.D. advisor and wrote Singh’s recommendation for the DHS application, said she was enthusiastic about recommending Singh for this opportunity “largely because her work is incredibly innovative, both theoretically and methodologically, bridging several areas of the discipline that are rarely brought together."
SC&I Associate Professor of Communication Lisa Mikesell, who is Singh’s Ph.D. advisor and wrote Singh’s recommendation for the DHS application, said she was enthusiastic about recommending Singh for this opportunity “largely because her work is incredibly innovative, both theoretically and methodologically, bridging several areas of the discipline that are rarely brought together. So presenting her project to a diverse audience of Communication scholars at DHS seemed quite valuable for helping us think through how to translate Sabrina's work to multiple audiences as well as refining her already tremendous efforts to bridge these diverse scholarly spaces.”
Singh’s dissertation looks at the organizational processes behind memory cafes. “Specifically,” Singh said, “I am trying to answer the question of ‘How are memory cafes communicatively constituted such that they have the power to potentially reconstitute ideas about dementia?’ Memory cafes are informal spaces that people living with dementia and their caregivers can attend in order to temporarily not be inundated by the realities of living with dementia. These cafes are beneficial to attendees, but there is not much information about the communication practices that shape their experiences. To answer this overarching question, I have interviewed memory cafe organizers and attendees as well as observed several memory cafes. Overall, I hope that this research can better help organizers understand the different types of cafes within the United States and start to get at how to better serve attendees.”
This year the NCA invited mentors and students to apply to one of three mentoring seminar areas: communication theory and research, media theory and research, and rhetorical and performance theory and research. Singh applied for, and was accepted into, the communication theory and research seminar.
Singh said she is particularly excited to attend this seminar because, “I think it'll be fun to discuss the DHS theme of the future of communication with rising communication scholars. I am excited to work with all three mentors because they each can speak to different parts of my dissertation. I am employing a CCO (communicative constitution of organizations) approach throughout my dissertation and Dr. Tim Kuhn is one of the leading scholars in that area. My dissertation naturally has a health communication component because I am looking at memory cafes which can be considered a health intervention. Given Dr. Charee Thompson's work in developing theoretically grounded communication trainings, I hope she can provide insights regarding how to help memory cafe organizers implement the findings from my dissertation. Finally, part of my observational data comes from observing virtual memory cafes, and given Dr. Andrew High's work in computer-mediated communication, he may have recommendations about how to analyze that data. Overall, given the fact that my dissertation intersects with different subfields of communication, I think this group of mentors will be able to provide holistic guidance about how to improve my analysis within the dissertation.”
Attending the DHS, Singh said, will benefit her research because she will be able learn about research areas that are different than her own; have the opportunity to practice presenting her dissertation to individuals who have not been involved in her project; and be able her to refine her arguments so they appeal to a wider range of scholars.
In terms of enabling her to network with other doctoral students, Singh said attending the DHS will “Be helpful because I will be able to connect with graduate students across the country who are in similar stages in their programs. Overall, I think the DHS is a wonderful opportunity to build community with other graduate students and to help each other grow as scholars.”
Offering advice to aspiring Ph.D. students, Singh said, “First, I would say find an advisor who is understanding of you as a scholar and as a person. I came to Rutgers because of Professor Lisa Mikesell, and I don't regret that decision because she has been an incredible advisor.
Offering advice to aspiring Ph.D. students, Singh said, “First, I would say find an advisor who is understanding of you as a scholar and as a person. I came to Rutgers because of Professor Lisa Mikesell, and I don't regret that decision because she has been an incredible advisor. My research isn't necessarily cookie-cutter, and Lisa has been amazing in supporting my ideas. She helped connect me to opportunities I wouldn't have thought to pursue (e.g., work on her research grant on South Asian youth mental health needs and an organizational health communication project on space redesign in an emergency department with Dr. DJ Woo). Additionally, she pushed me to really meld my interests in health and organizational communication, and craft a dissertation committee who are supportive yet push my thinking.
“Second, work with faculty across Rutgers. I've had the opportunity to work with communication professors, a library and information science professor, and a professor in the nursing school. All of these experiences allowed me to learn methods that I wouldn't have otherwise had the chance to learn (e.g., digital ethnography and design-based approaches to health interventions), and I am a better researcher because of these opportunities.
“Third, be open to unexpected opportunities that can help them grow as researchers. One of the most fulfilling projects I worked on as a doctoral student was co-editing a book on reproductive justice (A Culturally Centered and Intersectional Approach to Reproductive Justice), but the project wasn't planned, it unexpectedly came to fruition due to an International Communication Association (ICA) panel I was a part of during my first year as a doctoral student.”
Learn more about the Ph.D. Program at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.
