About

Stacey L. Connaughton is a Professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University and serves as the Director of the Purdue Policy Research Institute (PPRI) housed in Purdue's Discovery Park. Her primary research interests include leadership, political violence prevention, and policy, with a focus on multi-stakeholder organizing in the context of political violence prevention initiatives. She has led efforts in Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria through the Purdue Peace Project, developing the Local Leadership Model of political violence prevention and the Relationally Attentive Approach to engaged scholarship, which emphasizes inspiring citizens to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, and effective communicators. Dr. Connaughton has secured significant funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, USAID, and the Carnegie Corporation, among others. Her work involves collaboration with media, government, NGOs, civil society, and citizens to address violence and promote peacebuilding. She has also contributed to leadership development programs for Liberian leaders and has been involved in designing educational and public awareness campaigns for safety and autonomous vehicle interiors. As an educator, she teaches courses in qualitative research methods, leadership, and political violence prevention, and has received multiple teaching awards, including Purdue's Faculty Engaged Scholar Award and the Provost's Graduate Mentor Award. Additionally, she is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Communication and has served in various administrative roles at Purdue.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Public administration
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Postcolonial and Subaltern Scholarship on Communication in the African Continent

  2026-02-20

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter examines Postcolonial and Subaltern approaches to communication studies in Africa, challenging Eurocentric and American frameworks that have historically dominated the field. Despite growing scholarly interest in de-Westernizing communication, African-centered conceptualizations of communication through postcolonial and subaltern theoretical frameworks have not been fully unpacked. Through a systematic review of research spanning five decades (1974–2024), we analyzed 58 academic works focusing on Africa using JSTOR, EBSCO’s Communication and Mass Media Complete database, and Google Scholar. We employed the Boolean search term “Africa” (in abstract) AND “subaltern” OR “postcolonial.” Our analysis reveals three distinct conceptualizations of communication emerging from African contexts: communication as storytelling, communication as representation, and communication as resistance. Specifically, we highlight how communication practices are embedded in power structures shaped by colonial legacies yet simultaneously serve as vehicles for challenging hegemonic narratives. This work contributes to deepening the scope of communication scholarship by centering marginalized perspectives within the discipline and outlining how this body of work complicates dominant conceptualizations of communication.

  PublisherDOI

• Peace Studies: A New Open Access Journal Dedicated to Multidisciplinary Research and Evidence-Driven Policy and Practice

  Peace Studies · 2025-09-28

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The times we live in call for robust discussions for and about peace [...]

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Embedded research translation: an approach to shift the locus of power in collaborative research

  Development in Practice · 2025-12-09

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The mechanism of team-member exchange and its relationship to ethical leadership and team commitment

  Journal of General Management · 2025-01-23 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  In today’s volatile business environment, team-based commitment remained important and helped organization to perform better and be more adaptable. Therefore, team-based structures are increasingly important to organization, in part that due to their ability to leverage team leadership and individuals’ abilities to work collaboratively. This study contributes to what is known about team-based structures by examining the underlying process of team-member exchange as a mechanism for linking ethical leadership and team commitment. Drawing on social identity and social exchange theories, we develop a mediation model and demonstrate the link between team-member exchange, ethical leadership, and team commitment. The model was tested on a sample of 100 team leaders and 370 team members in the Malaysia aviation industry. Results from a hierarchical linear modeling analysis provided support for the model. That is, ethical leadership was positively related to team commitment through team-member exchange, conceptualized and operationalized as team members sharing and exchanging information, helping each other, and recognizing each other’s contributions towards the team. The study contributes to the literature on ethical leadership and enhances our understanding of the relationship between leadership and team behavior through team-member exchange.

  PublisherDOI

• Vulnerabilities of War, Violence, and Virus

  2025-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In this chapter, we present the lessons we learned over the course of our collaboration with everyday Liberian citizens as part of the Purdue Peace Project, a locally led peacebuilding initiative. Our projects in Liberia encompassed the vulnerabilities of a post-civil war society, political violence, and the widespread devastation caused when the already-weakened healthcare system was faced with the Ebola virus. We leverage what we refer to as the relationally attentive approach to articulate what we have learned about research design and execution while working with Liberian communities, interrogating and recognizing the multiple layers of marginalization and vulnerabilities in the Liberian people.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding older adults’ needs for and perceptions of shared autonomous vehicle interior features: A focus group and user enactment study

  Applied Ergonomics · 2024-11-19 · 5 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Predictors of armed intergroup-conflicts

  2024-09-09

  book-chapterSenior author

  Research on armed intergroup conflicts has steadily increased over the last decade. We provide a broad overview of studies that described predictors of armed intra-national conflicts. Based on a systematic literature search and analysis of studies that were published between 1966 and 2016, we identified 125 published articles that identified predictors and risk factors of armed intergroup conflicts. Of these, 112 articles were published within the last 10 years. We use a social-identity framework to categorize the studied predictors and types of conflicts. Several studies identified proximal risk factors that were described in terms of the involved groups (e.g., religious rivalries). However, the vast majority of studies focused on distal risk factors (e.g., temperature). Future research may provide credible scenarios and models that can explain the effects of distal through proximal variables.

  PublisherDOI

• Leading Groups and Teams

  2023-11-03 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter covers leading groups and teams from a communication perspective. The authors first explore seven types of leadership: (1) transactional, (2) transformational, (3) emergent, (4) discursive, (5) relational, (6) leader-member exchange (LMX), and (7) inclusive leadership. After covering leadership theories, the chapter connects theoretical notions of leadership to practical ideals such as communication in teams/groups. Then, the authors dive deep into seven corresponding communication behaviors and processes: (1) communicating goals and visions, (2) managing conflict, (3) emotional intelligence (EI), (4) encouraging feedback, (5) framing, (6) embracing intersectional identities in groups and teams, and (7) the importance of facilitating participation and voice through ethical leadership. The chapter concludes with evidence-based recommendations for practice, key terms, and additional readings.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding workplace culture in Malaysia: cultural characteristics of Chinese-Malaysian ethnic society

  International Journal of Business and Globalisation · 2023-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  The purpose of this article is to unearth the cultural characteristics of the Chinese-Malaysian ethnic society. Data collected from in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 25 participants revealed three themes that help us understand the between-group and within-group characteristics of Chinese ethnic group members in Malaysia: community affiliation and embeddedness, survival culture, and respect culture. These categories of meanings point to some unique ways in which cultural norms and values are conceptualised, valued, and constructed by Chinese-Malaysian ethnic group members. Findings suggest that Chinese Confucianism and native norms and values materialise in the Chinese-Malaysian context when members of the society are able to communicate constructively with each other through their own community affiliation, a feature that is itself part of their ethnic identity. The findings of this study have important theoretical and practical implications for managing cross-cultural and multi-ethnic relationships in the workplace.

  PublisherDOI

• Ethical leadership communications scale: Development and validation of a measure and multi-level test

  Journal of General Management · 2023 · 7 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology

  Ethical leadership emphasizes the promotion of ethical behavior through two-way communication with followers. This article introduces the development of an ethical leadership communication scale that was created based on three categories of an ethical leadership conceptual framework, namely, the leader being an example of ethics in action, the leader treating his/her followers fairly, the leader actively managing morality. Relevant items were developed and subjected to factor analysis with a sample of 175 respondents from organization A, resulting in a 1-factor solution with 15 items. Using a 522-person sample from organizations B and C, we verified the 1-factor solution with 15-item with confirmatory factor analysis. We further validated the 15-item ethical leadership communication scale by regressing outcomes with structural equation modeling (SEM) from Organization D. We then tested the ethical leadership communication scale with the ethical leadership questionnaire and ethical leadership survey (ELS), and analyzed the data using multi-level hierarchical regression. Results suggest that the ethical leadership communication scale as a construct is a unique contribution beyond the ethical leadership constructs in explaining organizational citizenship behaviors. The new ethical leadership communication scale (the Ethical Leadership Communication Scale-15) demonstrates adequate reliability, validity, and across organization generalizability. Findings of this study further the model of ethical leadership and communication behavior and help to re-conceptualize the role of dyadic communication in ethical leadership. This study paves the way for finer-grained theorizing and analysis of ethical leadership and communication dynamics in the workplace.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hassan Abu Bakar

  9 shared

• Arunima Krishna

  Boston University

  8 shared

• John A. Daly

  The University of Texas at Austin

  7 shared

• Jasmine R. Linabary

  7 shared

• Elizabeth A. Williams

  University of Sheffield

  5 shared

• Jennifer S. Linvill

  Purdue University System

  5 shared

• Marissa L. Shuffler

  Clemson University

  4 shared

• Brent D. Ruben

  4 shared

Labs

• Purdue Policy Research Institute / Purdue Peace ProjectPI

Awards & honors

• Purdue's 2017 Faculty Engaged Scholar Award
• 2020 Purdue Provost's Graduate Mentor Award
• Purdue's 2018 Trailblazer Award