Kristina
Scharp

Kristina Scharp’s research meets at the intersection of interpersonal, family, and health communication with a particular focus on difficult family transitions and the process of marginalization. She most often examines marginalization in the contexts of relational/family distancing, complicated health diagnoses, and disenfranchised student populations.

Kristina Scharp’s research programmatically advances communication theory and method with the aim of (a) exposing institutionalized structures of oppression, (b) understanding the populations those structures marginalize, and (c) illuminating communication processes marginalized populations enact to cope with the inequities they experience. Although her work is often framed by Relational Dialectics Theory and the Communication Theory of Resilience, she is currently working to advance a Theory of Relational Distancing. Scharp has also developed her own qualitative research method, thematic co-occurrence analysis. In addition to advancing theory and method, one of her primary goals is to translate her research through public outreach (e.g., consulting with clinicians and policymakers) and through the popular press.

Overall, Scharp primarily conducts research about the following communication processes:

· Remaking – disrupting the taken-for-granted assumptions that foster inequity

· Resistance – challenging institutional structures and hegemonic ideologies

· Resilience – understanding how marginalized populations make sense of and respond to the major disruptions to and transition in their lives

This research extends across contexts such as relational/family distancing (e.g., family estrangement, parental alienation, adoption, etc.), complicated health diagnoses (e.g., postpartum depression, abortion due to health complications, hearing loss, etc.), and disenfranchised student populations/experiences (e.g., homesickness, undergraduate student parents, first-generation college students, etc.).