Laura Bruns is an Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University. Originally from Aiken, SC, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the College of Charleston in 2008 and Master of Science in Communication from Illinois State University in 2010. She completed her PhD studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI in 2022.
 

Her lifelong interest in death and dying stems from a general sense of anxiety, morbid curiosity, and a college seminar in death and dying that she found fascinating. Her dissertation, "Perimortem Rhetoric: A Rhetoric of Death and Dying," examined the ways that we rhetorically talk around the words "death" and "dying." Her other research interests include the rhetoric of magic, communication education, social movements, feminist rhetoric, rhetorical autoethnography, field rhetoric, and persuasion. She is currently serving as the inaugural Chair of the newly established (2023) Death Communication Division at the National Communication Association. When she's not doing research, she is hanging out with her three fur kids - one elderly dog and my two mischievous cats - and her one human child and human husband. In her free time, she loves trying new vegan foods, volunteering with a local hospice, drinking wine, reading manga, planning the next Halloween costume, listening to k-pop, and getting out into nature.

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Contact: lcbruns@gmail.com