Karen Lunsford

About

Karen Lunsford is a professor in the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her specialization includes qualitative and ethnographic studies, business writing, technical writing, scientific writing, argumentation, knowledge ecologies, collaboration, and multimedia communication. She is a faculty member in the Applied Linguistics Department and contributes to research and teaching in these areas, focusing on understanding and improving communication practices across various contexts.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Public relations
• Medical education
• Multimedia
• Communication
• Pedagogy
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• “Mistakes Are a Fact of Life”: A National Comparative Study

  College Composition and Communication · 2008-06-01 · 145 citations

  articleSenior author

  This essay reports on a study of first-year student writing. Based on a stratified national sample, the study attempts to replicate research conducted twenty-two years ago and to chart the changes that have taken place in student writing since then. The findings suggest that papers are longer, employ different genres, and contain new error patterns.

  PublisherDOI

• Toward Wayfinding: A Metaphor for Understanding Writing Experiences

  Written Communication · 2019-11-15 · 65 citations

  article

  In this essay, we map out four major approaches to the study of writing experiences: (a) worlds apart, (b) literacy in the wild, (c) ecologies and networks, and (d) transfer. We examine how the primary metaphors used in each approach have contributed to our field’s understanding of writing. In focusing on specific dimensions of writing, each framework privileges a different aspect of the writing process, writing development, and/or writers’ context(s). Building on these approaches, we propose th…

  PublisherDOI

• Affect and Wayfinding in Writing after College

  College English · 2020 · 21 citations

  Preview this article: Affect and Wayfinding in Writing after College, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/82/6/collegeenglish30804-1.gif

  PublisherDOI

• Slipping into the world: Platforms, scale, and branding in alumni's social media writing

  Computers & composition/Computers and composition · 2023 · 5 citations

  In this article, we draw on focus group interviews collected for the Wayfinding Project to explore how university alumni orient themselves as writers while participating in social media after graduation. By looking at alumni's self descriptions of their writing processes across public networks, we are able to trace pathways that recognize the rhetorical and communicative intentions of users, while also acknowledging the roles that serendipity, creativity, and the unexpected play in shaping these…

  PublisherDOI

• When Things Collide: Wayfinding in Professional Writers' Early Career Development

  Literacy in Composition Studies · 2022 · 4 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  In this article, we explore how the concept of wayfinding allows us an opportunity to map post-collegiate writers’ complex and recursive movement in and out of different territories, realms, spaces, and spheres of writing ecologies. Focusing specifically on accounts from seven alumni who participated in focus group interviews during 2018-19, we offer stories of writers’ navigating the transition from college to workforce. Using wayfinding as our theoretical lens, we pay attention to the ways in…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jonathan Alexánder

  14 shared

• James P. Purdy

  8 shared

• Carl Whithaus

  Adams State University

  7 shared

• Bertram C. Bruce

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  6 shared

• Muzhgan Nazarova

  3 shared

• Ann Peterson Bishop

  3 shared

• Caroline Haythornthwaite

  Syracuse University

  3 shared

• P. Bryan Heidorn

  University of Arizona

  3 shared

Education

• PhD in English with a Specialization in Writing Studies, English / Center for Writing Studies

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2003

Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara

• Richard Mayerh-147
• Stefan Thomas Griesh-62
• Simon Petersh-44