Dr. Nicole Defenbaugh earned her Ph.D. in performance of health, autoethnography, and ethnography of communication from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale before joining the faculty in 2007. Her research includes multi-methodological inquiries into the construction of illness identity. Dr. Defenbaugh’s current research projects explore IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) and the influence of gender discourse in chronic illness through a performative lens.

Prior to joining Bloomsburg University, Dr. Defenbaugh taught for four years during her Ph.D. program at Southern Illinois University, two years in Minnesota at Winona State University where she directed the forensics (speech) team, and two summer programs for the Junior Statesmen Association (JSA) at Yale University in 2002 and Stanford University in 2003. She has been involved in theatre since 1990 and five years ago began her journey analyzing the construction of illness through performance studies. In 2005 she wrote, co-directed, and performed a one-woman show entitled “It Takes Guts [Colon] Spelling with Dis-ease” about medicalese, alternative healing, and embodied language. Dr. Defenbaugh recently presented a synopsis of her show for the Penn Island Symposium at Penn State Hershey Medical School. She has presented her research at numerous national and regional conferences and has a forthcoming book entitled, Sites of Discovery: A Narrative Journey of the IBD Body. This past spring she won the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Dissertation Award and has published in the Journal of Health Communication, Qualitative Inquiry, and the Iowa Journal of Communication.