Amanda Denes

Professor

Department of Communication

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2012

About

Amanda Denes, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Connecticut. Her primary area of specialization is interpersonal and health communication, with emphases in biosocial models of communication, sexual communication, and communication processes related to maintaining healthy relationships. Overall, the aim of her research is to identify communication processes in close relationships that contribute to people’s physical, psychological, and relational health and use these findings to inform interventions that improve the health and well-being of the individuals at the heart of her work.

Amanda is an award-winning, internationally recognized scholar. She is a proud Fulbright alumna, having received a U.S. Scholar Award from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission for her research at the Translational Health Research Institute at Western Sydney University exploring couples’ communication when navigating a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

In addition to numerous paper awards from the International Communication Association, Amanda received the Early Career Award from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association and has been recognized as one of the top scholars in communication studies about sex. She was also ranked as one of the most productive scholars in the field of Communication in the past 5 years. Her research has been featured in over 100 news and media outlets, such as Psychology Today, HuffPost, Newsweek, Women’s Health Magazine, Men’s Health Magazine, Men’s Health Australia, ABC News Radio, Jezebel, Refinery29, and Discovery News.

Amanda’s current work explores couples’ cancer experiences, with the aim of identifying forms of communication that contribute to partners’ well-being when managing the relational and sexual changes that accompany cancer and its treatment. She has collaborated with international researchers, including those at the Translational Health Research Institute at Western Sydney University, to gain a global perspective on the challenges facing couples managing cancer. She continues to explore communication processes in intimate contexts and the bidirectional relationship between communication and our bodies. Amanda is also committed to addressing the impact of communication on the health of individuals from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups, with a focus on the experiences of the LGBTQI+ community. Her current projects explore the impact of cancer on LGBTQI+ individuals’ sexuality; the link between LGBTQI+ students’ communication, mental health, and environmental factors; and the impact of receiving support on LGBTQI+ individuals’ stress and well-being when disclosing an experience of hate speech directed at their sexual orientation.

Amanda is also committed to service and teaching. Her teaching has been recognized with the Early Career Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University of Connecticut Chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Outstanding Teaching and Classroom
Inclusion Award from the University of Connecticut Rainbow Center for her commitment to supporting sexual and gender diversity in the classroom. Amanda also values digital education and curriculum development. She has designed several online courses both independently and with support from UConn eCampus. She appreciates innovation in digital education and has published several studies examining the effectiveness of an online peer-to-peer relationship- building exercise in promoting student connection. She has served as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Communication and on several national and international committees and review boards. She also serves as the Editor of Communication Reports and a Co-Editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Physiology of Interpersonal Communication.