Purdue University

Graduate Student, Communication

Alan Monroe Graduate Scholar

College of Liberal Arts

Thesis Title: "Drivers" of India's HIV/AIDS epidemic: Culture-centered co-constructions with long-distance truck drivers

About

My primary area of research is in Global Health Communication, and in particular global HIV/AIDS policies and campaigns, with secondary interests in intercultural communication, globalization and media semiotics. My dissertation project, entitled “Drivers of India’s HIV/AIDS epidemic: Culture-centered co-constructions with long-distance truck drivers”, seeks to identify the broad based structural barriers to health faced by India’s large truck driver population, and was awarded the 2011-2012 Purdue Research Foundation grant. Through the culture-centered principle of co-construction and dialogue, this ethnographic research project seeks to problematize the tensions between health interventions targeted at truckers and truckers’ life experiences. I employ my training and professional experience in the advertising industry in teaching courses like Advertising Writing, Advertising Theory and Presentational Speaking at Purdue. My teaching interests include Health and Culture, Critical approaches to Communication, Ethnographic Research Methods and the Semiotics of Advertising.