About

Victoria J. Gallagher is a Distinguished University Professor of Communication at NC State University, where she has served on the faculty since 1990. Her scholarly interests include visual and material rhetoric, rhetorical theory and criticism, communication ethics, and organizational communication. Her primary research focuses on the rhetorical analysis of civil rights discourse, commemorative sites such as museums and memorials, visual and material culture, and public art. She is the principal investigator of the award-winning Virtual Martin Luther King project, a significant digital humanities initiative supported in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Gallagher has also conducted research on gender and communication in engineering work teams, communication ethics, and communication education. She has authored and edited works related to urban communication and public memory, and her work has been featured in prominent media outlets and academic podcasts. Throughout her career, she has received numerous awards for her contributions to public humanities, communication research, and teaching, including the highest honor bestowed by NC State University, the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal of Excellence. In addition to her research, Gallagher has held leadership roles within professional associations such as the Southern States Communication Association and the Rhetoric Society of America, and she has served on community advisory boards, including the North Carolina Freedom Park Advisory Board.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Pedagogy
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Geography
• Epistemology
• World Wide Web
• Law
• Engineering
• Communication
• Mathematics education
• History

Selected publications

• Dynamics Of Peer Interactions In Cooperative Learning

  2024 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Mathematics education

  Although many recent studies demonstrate that cooperative learning provides a variety of educational advantages over more traditional instructional models, little is known about the interactional dynamics among students in engineering workgroups. We explored these dynamics and their implications for engineering education by analyzing work sessions of student groups in a sophomore-level chemical engineering course at North Carolina State University. Using conversation analysis as a methodology for understanding how students taught and learned from one another, we found that group members engaged in two types of teaching-learning interactions. In the first type, transfer-of-knowledge (TK) sequences, students took on distinct teacher and pupil roles, and in the second, collaborative sequences (CS), they worked on problems with no clear role differentiation. Student management of both types of sequences was affected by gender factors and interpersonal communication. Our findings suggest that facilitating effective interactional dynamics can enhance cooperative learning in groups.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enacting Equity and Ethics through VR in the Public Speaking Classroom

  2023-11-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter demonstrates how a collective VR experience of the Virtual Martin Luther King (vMLK) Project leads to significant learning outcomes in the Public Speaking course at a major university. Written student reflections and survey data demonstrate that the VR experience fosters the kind of reflection that evokes a participatory readiness for civic engagement by enabling students to put themselves into the position of those who heard the speech in 1960 and then transferring that experience to themselves as speakers who are engaging with issues and ideas today. The result is an ethical approach—utilizing VR—for teaching students how to engage in advocacy in and with communities.

  PublisherDOI

• Crafting a technology of recovery: the story of the Virtual Martin Luther King Project

  Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies · 2023-04-03

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Unearthing deep roots: tapping rhetoric's generative power to improve community and urban development projects

  2022-04-05

  book-chapter

  Several key questions about evaluating the University of Nevada, Reno’s Campus Master Plan from a “deep roots” perspective are worth considering, both in relation to the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Project in Power, Place, and Publics at the University of Nevada, Reno (RSA Project) and in relation to others that gather rhetorical scholars and community leaders for the purpose of developing productive outcomes: What methodologies are needed for rhetorical scholars to explore and assess the collective and historic identity of groups situated in urban place and space? How can we interrogate the practices associated with an immersive cultural experience in a scholarly working group? How can a deliberative framework inform similar future projects? In this article, we advance three essential tasks for rhetorical scholars to engage in when undertaking such projects: (1) use more of rhetoric’s generative power and less of its critical/analytical power in order to articulate multiple possible avenues for developing places and spaces; (2) conduct extensive on-the-ground research to uncover the “collective identity” of various stakeholders and to show how those identities can productively inform planning; and (3) identify common ground as well as intractable differences among stakeholder positions and provide inventive ideas for managing both.

  PublisherDOI

• Displaying Race:

  University of South Carolina Press eBooks · 2021-12-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• FROM “DEAD WRONG” TO CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY:

  University of South Carolina Press eBooks · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • History
  PublisherDOI

• An integrative view on refugee research: New research insights and lessons learned for academics

  2020-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• Public address as embodied experience: using digital technologies to enhance communicative and civic engagement in the communication classroom

  Communication Education · 2020 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Pedagogy

  This study examines how students characterize their experience of a communication-based digital humanities project in relation to elements of situated embodiment and situated learning. Analysis of student response data indicates that the Virtual Martin Luther King Project situates students in a particular space and historical context resulting in communication outcomes including a form of cognitive attention that is conducive of reflection and fosters civic engagement. The essay concludes with a discussion of what is transferable from this case in relation to creating the conditions for situated learning and public address as immersive, embodied experience in communication classrooms.

  PublisherDOI

• Painting publics: Transnational legal graffiti scenes as spaces for encounter, by Caitlin Frances Bruce

  Argumentation and Advocacy · 2020-12-22

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Caitlin Frances Bruce’s ​Painting Publics: Transnational Legal Graffiti Scenes as Spaces for Encounter​ explores scenes of publicity and public making through visual culture. Bruce draws upon and e...

  PublisherDOI

• Unearthing deep roots: tapping rhetoric’s generative power to improve community and urban development projects

  Review of Communication · 2020-04-01 · 1 citations

  article

  Several key questions about evaluating the University of Nevada, Reno’s Campus Master Plan from a “deep roots” perspective are worth considering, both in relation to the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Project in Power, Place, and Publics at the University of Nevada, Reno (RSA Project) and in relation to others that gather rhetorical scholars and community leaders for the purpose of developing productive outcomes: What methodologies are needed for rhetorical scholars to explore and assess the collective and historic identity of groups situated in urban place and space? How can we interrogate the practices associated with an immersive cultural experience in a scholarly working group? How can a deliberative framework inform similar future projects? In this article, we advance three essential tasks for rhetorical scholars to engage in when undertaking such projects: (1) use more of rhetoric’s generative power and less of its critical/analytical power in order to articulate multiple possible avenues for developing places and spaces; (2) conduct extensive on-the-ground research to uncover the “collective identity” of various stakeholders and to show how those identities can productively inform planning; and (3) identify common ground as well as intractable differences among stakeholder positions and provide inventive ideas for managing both.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Susan J. Drucker

  13 shared

• Matthew D. Matsaganis

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  13 shared

• Roderick Hindery

  9 shared

• John Keegan

  9 shared

• C Eugéne

  Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès

  9 shared

• David Anderson Hooker

  University of Notre Dame

  9 shared

• Brevard S. Childs

  9 shared

• Richard Penaskovic

  Auburn University

  9 shared

Labs

• Research and EngagementPI

Education

• Ph.D., American Studies

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  2003

• M.A., American Studies

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1998

• B.A., American Studies

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1995

Awards & honors

• Harlan Joel Gradin Award for Excellence in Public Humanities
• NC State University Libraries Faculty Award
• Robert M. Entman award for Excellence in Communication Resea…
• Graduate School Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentoring Award…
• NC State Board of Trustees Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal…