Megan R. Flannery

Scholar. Educator. Advocate.

Communication, Rhetoric & Digital Media PhD candidate at NC State. Specializing in discourse analysis, trauma-informed research and pedagogy, professional writing, and gender studies.

Though my previous degrees focus on English and writing, I consider myself to be an interdisciplinary scholar, contributing to the fields of rhetoric and composition, interpersonal communication, digital media, and women’s and gender studies. My interdisciplinary program at North Carolina State University (Communication, Rhetoric & Digital Media—CRDM) allows me to research my interests from a wide array of approaches; therefore providing a more robust and accurate understanding of these interests. During my time at NCSU, I have focused mainly on one underrepresented community: survivors of sexual assault.

Due to the sensitive nature of sexual assault, many survivors do not even disclose their assault, let alone volunteer to participate in research studies. However, I believe that with the new and burgeoning digital platforms, more survivors can disclose their experiences anonymously and that these platforms can be responsibly utilized as a source of largescale data for research and analysis. I believe this approach can help us research survivor experiences without requiring survivors to relive their traumatic experience. Ultimately, my goal is to conduct research that will help better educate the public on the realities of sexual assault, alter the way that first-responders treat survivors of sexual assault, and provide survivors with better resources.