Dominique Brossard

Dominique Brossard is an investigator with the Morgridge Institute for Research, and professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an affiliate of the UW-Madison Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the UW-Madison Global Health Institute. Her teaching responsibilities include courses in strategic communication theory and research, with a focus on science and risk communication. Brossard’s research agenda focuses on the intersection between science, media and policy with the Science, Media and the Public (SCIMEP) research group, which she co-directs. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former board member of the International Network of Public Communication of Science and Technology, Brossard is an internationally known expert in public opinion dynamics related to controversial scientific issues. She is particularly interested in understanding the role of values in shaping public attitudes and using cross-cultural analysis to understand these processes. She has published more than 130 research articles in outlets such as Science, Proceedings of National Academy of Science, Science Communication,, Public Understanding of Science, and Communication Research and has been an expert panelist for the National Academy of Sciences on various occasions.

Brossard has a varied professional background that includes experience in the lab and in the corporate world. Notably, she spent five years at Accenture in its Change Management Services Division. She was also the communication coordinator for the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII), a position that combined public relations with marketing communication and strategic communication. Her family worked dairy farms for many generations.

Brossard earned her M.S. in plant biotechnology from the Ecole Nationale d’Agronomie de Toulouse and her M.P.S and Ph.D. in communication from Cornell University.