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The 2024 Boase Prize recipient, Dr. Kevin J. Barge, Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University, will give a lecture on Monday, September 16 from 3-4 p.m. in Schoonover Center 145.
“Our committee received numerous nominations of accomplished scholar-teachers for the 2024 Paul Boase Prize,” said Lynn Harter, Boase Prize committee chair. "Dr. Kevin Barge quickly rose to the top in our deliberations as someone whose distinguished career is worthy of this recognition. Dr. Barge’s scholarship is rooted in a recognition of communication as a practical discipline that can address wicked dilemmas through creative collaborations between research communities and nonacademic communities. He is recognized internationally as a thought leader in the practice of engaged scholarship and research on leadership, reflexive and dialogic practice, and organizational and social change. Like Dr. Paul Boase, his work has had lasting impact in the discipline and we are honored to host him at Ohio University for the 2024 Paul Boase Lecture.”
About the Lecture
How does one engage in advocacy if you believe in the power of dialogue to work through important differences in our social worlds?
Dr. Barge suggests that the concept of dialogical advocacy allows us to complement traditional models of advocacy based on influence and persuasion with a model of advocacy that is grounded in collaboration and creating generative conversational spaces. Using a case study from higher education, he explores the opportunities and constraints of dialogical advocacy for creating collaborative conversations aimed at social change.
Dr. Barge’s research centers on developing a social constructionist approach to leadership and articulating the connections between appreciative practice and organizational change. He has published widely in national and international journals including the Academy of Management Review, Communication Theory, and Human Relations.
The lecture is presented by the School of Communication Studies and is free and open to the University and Athens community.
About the Paul H. Boase Prize
Paul Henshaw Boase (1915-2000), founding director of the School of Interpersonal Communication (now the School of Communication Studies) at Ohio University, was a nationally known scholar of public address and a beloved teacher widely acknowledged for his devotion to his students’ learning. To remember his commitment and compassion, his family established the Paul Boase Prize for Scholarship.
The Boase Prize honors scholars who have made an outstanding contribution to the discipline through recent scholarship (in any area of Communication) that has had a major influence on the direction of scholarship within the field. The award is given to a person whose scholarship reflects the spirit of Paul Boase—his dedication to others, his commitment to making a difference, and his love of learning.