Meggie Mapes

Ph.D., Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Rhetoric & Political Communication

Dr. Meggie Mapes is a distinguished communication strategist, educator, and author dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations to communicate with authenticity and impact. As an associate teaching professor and director at the University of Kansas, she oversees public speaking and professional public speaking curricula that serve over 4,000 students annually. Her award-winning open textbook, Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy, 2nd Ed., saves local and internatioal students millions of dollars per year. She is also a faculty presenter for the Open Education Network, where she leads dozens of faculty workshops to explore open educational resources. 

As a researcher, Dr. Mapes uses rhetorical fieldwork and critical qualitaitve methods to explore how gendered and racial beliefs circulate. Her work emerges out of cultural studies and critical pedagogy, with publications in Communication Education, Women’s Studies in Communication, QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, and Journal of Feminist Scholarship, to name a few. Dr. Mapes is a fierce collaborator with co-authored works in a number of anthologies, books, and creative publications. She has collected extensive data inside prisons and is currently writing a book entitled, “What Men Believe.” 

Dr. Mapes is currently the editor for The Journal of Communication Pedagogy and remains committed to open educational resources and open access.