Education
M.S., Ecole National Supérieure d’Agronomie de Toulouse, France;
MPS Cornell University;
Ph.D., Cornell University
Dominique Brossard is professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an affiliate of the UW–Madison Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the UW–Madison Energy Institute, the UW–Madison Global Health Institute, and the UW–Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. She is also a principal investigator at the Morgridge Institute for Research. 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 of the International Communication Association, 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 100 research articles in outlets such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Communication, Public Understanding of Science, the International Journal of Public Opinion, and Communication Research and has been an expert panelist for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) on various occasions. She currently serves on the NASEM Climate Communication Initiative Advisory Committee as well as on the Executive Committee of the Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN), which aims at facilitating rapid and actionable responses to social, behavioral, and economic-related COVID-19 questions. Brossard is a member of the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She is also on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences and she is the Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation.
Brossard has a varied professional background that includes experience in the lab and 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.
You can find a list of her publications on Google Scholar.