Title: Assistant Teaching Professor
University: Northeastern University
Email: kemorelli@gmail.com
Description of your work
I am relatively new to RHM and much like the field, I am still trying to figure out my own identity as a researcher/scholar. In general, my research tends to be qualitative and community-driven and meets at the intersections of the fields of rhetoric, literacy studies, technical communication and applied linguistics. This is to say I bring a variety of disciplinary tools and lenses to my research and scholarship. Most recently, I have been investigating the intercultural rhetorical work of health professionals working in complex multicultural and multilingual contexts of healthcare delivery. I have also been exploring ways to more actively involve and collaborate with participants in the research process through innovative research methodologies that involve tracing and supporting rhetorical performances in clinical settings. Through the methods I utilize, I emphasize and try to elicit the embodied and experiential knowledge that guides situated professional practice in healthcare settings, but which often remains undocumented. When reflecting on what I have learned thus far and where I would like to take my research I have been thinking a lot about rhetorical agency and what may restrict and/or support patient rhetorical agency in the context of healthcare delivery. As a RHM researcher with a background in applied linguistics, I often think about how language, literacy and culture factor into patient rhetorical agency among other factors (e.g. race, immigration status). Through my current research, I have also begun to challenge established theories and conceptions of health literacy in the fields of biomedicine and health promotion. In contrast to the decontextualized and individualistic approaches to health literacy in these fields, I view health literacy as situated, social and community-based. With this approach in mind, I wonder what we as RHM scholars might bring to healthcare contexts that might support and help foster community health literacy. I believe that RHM scholars have the potential to do important work in our communities and I look forward to exploring those possibilities.