Dr. Sarah J. Tracy (Ph.D., University of Colorado) is Professor and former Director of The Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. Dr. Tracy researches and teaches in the areas of organizational communication and qualitative methodology. She is Co-Founder of The Transformation Project, a consortium of faculty, students, and community members who seek to discover and promote creative change processes that encourage healthy communication patterns, collaborative group behavior, and equitable forms of social organization.
Professor Tracy’s scholarly work examines emotion, communication, and identity in the workplace with foci on emotional labor, compassion, bullying, and organizational flourishing. She is an interdisciplinary leader in qualitative research methods. She founded the Youtube channel Get Your Qual On and her award-winning research has resulted in two books including Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact, by Wiley, now in its third edition. This book elucidates a contextual approach for phronetic iterative qualitative data analysis (PIQDA), serving as a primary scholarly source on qualitative design and analysis, a practitioner’s resource for assessment, and a pedagogical resource for short courses, workshops, and graduate and undergraduate courses.
Dr. Tracy has published more than 100 scholarly monographs, with over 25,000 citations, appearing in outlets such as Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, Management Communication Quarterly, Human Communication Research, Qualitative Inquiry, Health Communication, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Applied Communication Research. As Director of the school (2021-2025), her leadership focused on advancing inclusive excellence, entrepreneurial innovation, top-tier use-inspired research, impactful community partnerships, results-driven education, and organizational flourishing for school stakeholders.
Sarah has fostered collaborations with multiple industries and given keynotes and workshops worldwide for a variety of universities and organizations. Her work inspires communication that builds resilience in the face of organizational disruption, burnout, and stress. Furthermore, Sarah regularly serves as a public scholar on topics such as digital interaction, leadership, burnout, toxic positivity, and work-life balance—contributing to outlets such as National Public Radio, The Today Show, The Phoenix Business Journal, and The Arizona Republic.
Awards and Recognition Include:
- Top 2% of scientists in the world across all fields (Stanford University’s Scientist Career Rankings) (link)
- Fellow of the International Communication Association for distinguished career contributions to the broad field of communication (link)
- Distinguished Scholar of The National Communication Association for career scholarly achievement in the field of human communication. (link)
- Distinguished Scholar Award for career scholarly achievement in communication studies (Western States Communication Association) (link)
- Outstanding Mentoring Award for career contributions to student mentoring (National Communication Association, Organizational Communication Division)
- Distinguished Teaching Award for career achievement in teaching communication studies (Western States Communication Association) (link)
- Jablin Award for outstanding career contributions in organizational communication (Organizational Communication Division, International Communication Association)
- Legacy Award honoring career achievement in high-quality ethnographic and qualitative research (Ethnography Division, National Communication Association) (link)
- Charles H. Woolbert Research Award honoring her journal article (Crystallized Self) that has stood the test of time and become a stimulus for new conceptualizations of communication phenomena (National Communication Association) (link)
- Jeanne Lind Herberger Endowed Professorship recognizing excellence in scholarship (The Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, ASU) (link)
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