SC&I Professor of Communication Galina Bolden has been elected President of the International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA) for the term 2023-26.
“I am greatly honored to be elected to the role of ISCA President.,” Bolden said. “In this role, I will strive to carry on the ISCA’s mission of promoting conversation analytic scholarship and enhancing opportunities for Conversation Analysis education across the globe.”
The ISCA “is an independent faculty-and-student-based professional association in higher education, designed to serve the needs of scholars of language and social interaction across a variety of disciplines and applications,” according to its website. “Founded in 2010, the Society seeks to provide its members with resources to advance the field by circulating findings, creating better courses, strengthening research, and creating a collective voice for the development and application of professional findings. A major aim of ISCA is to encourage and enhance interdisciplinary research into the structure and dynamics of social interaction through the creation of a multi-disciplinary community of scholars.”
As Bolden explained* “Conversation Analysis (CA) is an interdisciplinary field of study that investigates fundamental communication processes that make human interaction possible. […] A distinctive feature of this empirical approach to the study of communication is its reliance on video- and audio-recordings of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction. […] CA research examines diverse forms of talk and visible conduct in numerous social settings: casual conversations between friends and family members, interactions in courtrooms, classrooms, medical offices, news interviews, workplace meetings, calls to emergency services and helplines, and many others. […] CA takes human interaction to be at the center of social life and offers communication researchers a unique set of tools for uncovering its workings.”
Bolden, who earned a doctoral degree from UCLA, conducts conversation analytic research in Russian and English languages, both in ordinary conversation and in healthcare settings. She uses Conversation analysis to examine how participants enact and negotiate their cultural identities and personal relationships in and through talk-in-interaction. Her research explicates:
• how participants in social interaction negotiate meaning across and within English- and Russian-language speaking communities;
• how interpersonal relationships are enacted in culturally sensitive ways; and
• how participants negotiate meaning in medical and mental health contexts.
Bolden is an author of over forty articles and book chapters, a co-author (with SC&I Research Professor of Communication Alexa Hepburn) of Transcribing for Social Research (2017), co-editor (with John Heritage and Marja-Leena Sorjonen) of the book “Responding to Polar Questions Across Languages and Contexts” (2023), and she is currently co-authoring (with Jeffrey Robinson and Chase Raymond) two volumes, “Turn-taking in Social interaction” and “Repair in Interaction.”
Having served on the ISCA Board for the last two terms, first as ISCA’s information officer (2014-2018) and currently as ISCA’s finance officer (2018-2023), Bolden said these experiences have given her an understanding of the inner workings of this organization, the challenges it faces, and its role in facilitating Conversion Analysis research, training, and professional development.
In addition to her work for the ISCA, Bolden has gained organizational leadership experience by working in the Language and Social Interaction division of the National Communication Association (NCA), where she first served as an information officer (for two terms, 2011-2014) and then as a chair (a four-year term that rotates through the roles of vice-chair elect, vice chair, chair, and immediate past chair, 2014-2018).
Discover more about the Department of Communication at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.
