MONIQUE LUISI is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication in the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. She is committed to contributing knowledge that addresses the ways that individuals and groups communicate about health, disease, and disease prevention.

Grounded in theories of communication and public health, her research focuses on developing and understanding how individual and group identities intersects with health-related attitudes and behaviors through interpersonal and mediated communication.

Currently, she is involved in three areas of research: 1) communication about disease and prevention through new media, 2) improving health & science communication accessibility, and 3) communication about marginalized groups (e.g., race and sexuality) in entertainment media. For these areas of research, she uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to inquiry, with theories from applicable fields (e.g., communication, psychology, and gender studies) as guiding frameworks.

Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Vaccine, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Howard Journal of Communication, and Journal of Homosexuality. Some of these works have been featured in publications from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Her work has received Top Paper, Top Abstract, and Top Poster awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), including the 2014 AEJMC/Kappa Tau Alpha Carol Burnett Award.

Luisi has taught health news & promotion, strategic communication research methods, mass media theory, thesis writing seminar, diversity in media, and public speaking. For each course, she works to create communities that are collaborative and dynamic. To create these communities, she draws from her training, research, and the experiences of her students. Her training includes more than 10 years of teaching at the university level. In that time, she has received certification to teach online through the Online Teaching Foundations course at the University of Missouri and has taught an online course in five separate semesters.

Luisi’s service work is a bridge that connects her research and teaching expertise to the academic, professional, and public communities. While her service is varied, she is particularly interested in student-centered service where she can provide mentorship in research, and community-centered work that utilizes her health communication expertise. 

Refereed Publications

• Luisi, M. (2023). The Gucci “Wool Balaclava Jumper” case is a listening failure; It will happen again. Journal of Media Ethics. [In press]. https://doi.org/10.1080/23736992.2023.2194291
• Luisi, M. (2020). From bad to worse: The representation of the HPV vaccine Facebook. Vaccine. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.05.016.
• Luisi, M. (2020). Kansan parent/guardian perceptions of HPV and the HPV vaccine and the role of social media. Kansas Journal of Medicine, 13(1), 9-18.
• Luisi, M., Jones, R. and Luisi, T. (2020). Randall Pearson: Framing Black identity, masculinity, adoption and mental health in television. Howard Journal of Communications, 31(1), 71-85. doi: 10.1080/10646175.2019.1608481

Presentations

• Luisi, M. (2020). Missourian guardian perceptions of HPV and the HPV Vaccine and the role of social media. AEJMC Mid-Winter. Norman, OK.
• Luisi, M. (2020). “The Murdering of Our Daughters”: Facebook and the first decade of HPV vaccine health beliefs. ICA. Gold Coast, Australia.
• Nutting, B. and Luisi, M. (2019; 2019). “Why would I choose to live less?”: Millennial cancer clinical trial message frame preference. AEJMC (Toronto, Canada); [same authors] AEJMC Mid-Winter (Norman, OK).

Awards

• 2019 Top Poster, AEJMC Annual Meeting (Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk Division).
• 2018 Top Paper Abstract, AEJMC Midwinter Meeting (Entertainment Studies Interest Group)
• 2015 Top Paper (2nd place), AEJMC Annual Meeting (Religion and Media Interest Group)
• 2014 AEJMC/Kappa Tau Alpha/University of Hawaii Carol Burnett Award for best student paper in media ethics