Rebecca Walton

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

English

Rebecca Walton is an associate professor of technical communication and rhetoric at Utah State University. Her research interests include social justice, human rights, and qualitative methods for cross-cultural research. Primarily a field researcher, she has collaborated with organizations such as the Red Cross, Mercy Corps, and World Vision to conduct research in countries including Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, and Bolivia. Her research is at the forefront of work that makes explicit the connections between technical communication-its areas of expertise, its sites of research and practice, its responsibility as a wielder of power- and concerns of social justice, such as human dignity, respect, and equitable power distribution. Much of her research investigates how people in resource-constrained environments such as in the Global South and humanitarian organizations create, access, share, evaluate, and use information to meet their personal and professional goals. Her work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and other journals and edited collections. Three of her co-authored articles have won national awards: the Nell Ann Pickett Award in 2017 and 2016, as well as the STC Distinguished Article Award in 2017.