In the beginning of January Dr. Andrew C. Jones, from the Contemporary Communication Department, participated in COSTaction winter school in Zagreb, Croatia. During this winter school, Dr. Jones joined nearly 50 participants to learn new methods of argumentation analysis, and to analyze some arguments initially explored in past communication theses from LCC.

“It is a pleasure to work with LCC students on their nascent research projects, but the really exciting thing is to introduce what our students have done to a wider academic public,” Dr. Jones commented.  “It might feel like you just finish your thesis and then that’s it, but with several of the projects students have started at LCC there is real potential to shape the future of public policy discourse in Europe and around the world.”

The winter training school brought together participants from major centers for argumentation study across Europe, run by trainers from Lugano, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Jones plans to incorporate the methods of analysis from the training school into both the Communication Research Methods course he is teaching this semester, and into ongoing academic projects, he is planning for publication in 2020-21. “One nice thing about working at LCC is that you get a different perspective on your field then you would get in the US.” Dr. Jones concluded, “Here, for example, argumentation is strongly influenced by the new rhetoric and pragma-dialectics traditions. I would strongly encourage any recent Ph.D. in Communication studies from the US to consider applying to teach in Europe, just to get a bigger picture of what the field of Communication is like.”