Victoria Ledford, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University. She is a researcher, teacher, and advocate both within and outside the university setting.
Her research centrally focuses on inclusive communication practices, both in health communication contexts as well as within the classroom. In studying health campaigns and mediated health messages, she focuses on investigating the harms of stigma communication and developing interventions to reduce stigma. This research intersects with persuasion and communication science literature and ultimately seeks to answer: “how can we create health messages that persuade people to enact healthy behaviors but do not stigmatize them for not doing so?” Victoria’s research in the classroom is similarly rooted in her desire to create accessible and inclusive spaces for all people. This line of research subsequently focuses on strategies for effective and inclusive teaching. As an educator, Victoria tries to embody the effective practices her research uncovers and create a classroom where all students can thrive. She has taught courses across the various areas of her expertise, including health communication, stigma, quantitative research methods, and argumentation.
Victoria has published her research in various outlets, including peer reviewed journals such asHealth Communication, Journal of Health Communication, Stigma and Health, Communication Education, The Basic Course Communication Annual, and Communication Teacher as well as in edited books including The Handbook of Language in Public Health and Healthcare, Strategic Social Media as Activism, and The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology.
She has also worked on multiple grants funded by state and federal governments and recently secured a Spencer Foundation grant to study how college instructors within communication and related disciplines think about and implement generative AI policies in their classrooms.