As a scholar of technical and professional communication, I see my teaching as a critical site for my research. My inquiries into psychological safety (the base-level of comfort needed for effective teams to function) and collaboration are both prime areas for research on effective pedagogies. I engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning, doing IRB-approved research with my students and students at three other universities. The most recent areas of application for my work are in generative artificial intelligence, collaborative practices, and design thinking processes. My projects engage with the relationships between industry practices and classroom practices, seeking ways to foster iterative practices, empathetic responses, and tolerance of ambiguity within professional communication curricula. The research studies I have completed add depth to my understanding of the gaps between teaching practices and best practices for industry.
I also use my Ph.D. specialty in children’s and young adult media as a platform for researching multimodal literacy, examining computational thinking, and interrogating technical communication practices for children and teens. My research is grounded in the work of technical communication scholars, media theorists, and children’s literature scholars such as William Hart-Davidson, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Marah Gubar, Perry Nodelman, N. Katherine Hayles, Henry Jenkins, and Pierre Lévy. By introducing intermediation, intertextuality, recursivity, collaboration, design thinking, and participation as necessary concepts for understanding how children’s media operate, my work acknowledges the responsiveness of children’s texts: they structure and enact ideals, create communities, show conflict within and among those communities, and create and limit the knowledge and power available to users/readers.
Dusenberry, Lisa, Beth Howells, and Amanda Konkle. “Cocurricular Connectivity and Mentoring Momentum: Reimagining Professional Development in a Consolidated English Department.” ADE Bulletin 162 (2025): 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1632/KGBA5128. Refereed.
Dusenberry, Lisa and Joy Robinson. “Building Psychological Safety through Training Interventions: Manage the Team, Not Just the Project.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 63.3 (September 2020). Refereed. [IRB approval #1407]
Cooke, Laquana, Lisa Dusenberry, and Joy Robinson. “Gaming Design Thinking: Wicked Problems, Sufficient Solutions, and the Possibility Space of Games.” Technical Communication Quarterly 29.4 (available online now: https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2020.1738555). Refereed.
Robinson, Joy, Lisa Dusenberry, Liz Hutter, Halcyon Lawrence, Andy Frazee, and Rebecca Burnett. “State of the Field: Teaching with Digital Tools in Writing and Communication.” Computers and Composition 54 (December 2019). Refereed. [International IRB-based study]
Terry, Robert and Lisa Dusenberry. “Serious Interactive Fiction: Constraints, Interfaces, and Creative Writing Pedagogy.” Journal of Creative Writing Studies 3.1 (2019): 1-25. Refereed. [Single school IRB-based study]
Robinson, Joy, Lisa Dusenberry, and Halcyon M. Lawrence. "Collaborative Strategies for Distributed Teams: Innovation Through Interlaced Collaborative Writing." 2016 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC). 1-9. Refereed (2 rounds).
Dusenberry, Lisa, Liz Hutter, and Joy Robinson. “Filter. Remix. Make. Cultivating Adaptability Through Multimodality.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 45.3 (July 2015): 299–322. Refereed.
Dusenberry, Lisa. “Epic Nostalgia: Narrative Play and Transmedia Storytelling in Disney Epic Mickey.” Game On, Hollywood!: Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema. Eds. Gretchen Papazian and Joseph Sommers. McFarland. April 2013. Refereed.
Dusenberry, Lisa. "Reader-Players: The 39 Clues, Cathy's Book, and the Nintendo DS." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 35.4 (Winter 2010): 443-449. Refereed.
"A Field in Transition: Mapping the Trajectory of Faculty Digital Resource Use and Pedagogical Identity." Authored with Joy Robinson. Project status: IRB study approved and data collected. Essay collection out for publisher review, Digital Decades: Histories & Futures of Computers and Composition (for the Perspectives of Writing series, by The WAC Clearinghouse) (eds. Jason Tham, Naomi Silver, and Zhaozhe Wang).
“'Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Done This Yet': A Think-Aloud Study of AI-Assisted Writing” with Annie Mendenhall. Project status: IRB study with data collection complete. Article in development.