Sharon Dunwoody is the Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She retired in 2013 after more than 30 years of teaching science journalism and science communication.
In her research, Dunwoody focuses on the construction of media science messages and on how people use those messages for various cognitive and behavioral purposes. She is author of numerous journal articles; has co-edited two volumes, Communicating Uncertainty and Scientists and Journalists; and is author of Reconstructing Science for Public Consumption.
Her research career has garnered many awards, including the Paul J. Deutschmann Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The first woman to receive the award, she was nominated by professors emeriti David H. Weaver and G. Cleve Wilhoit, who lauded her ability to collaborate with noted scholars as well as strike out in new directions of her own.
Dunwoody is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and the Society for Risk Analysis. She has served twice as head of the section on General Interest in Science and Technology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is former president of both the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Dunwoody has served as a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Brazil, as a visiting journalism fellow at Deakin University in Australia and as Donnier Guest Professor at Stockholm University.
A former award-winning science reporter for The Light in San Antonio, Texas, Dunwoody earned a master’s degree in mass communication from Temple University in 1975 in the years between her two IU degrees.