About Me

I am an Associate Professor in the College of Communication & Information Sciences at The University of Alabama. My research involves several key areas centered around health communication and communication studies and is driven by communication and psychology theory and computational social science. My work uses a variety of additional methods including quantitative and qualitative approaches. I attended Purdue University where I received my B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. and had the privilege to with Dr. Sorin Matei, where I was introduced to computational social science, networks, and machine learning. I likewise had the privilege to work with Dr. Bart Collins at Discovery Park at Purdue, and Dr. James Mohler in the Computer Graphics Technology Department in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute.

Much of my work is collaborative in nature including work with faculty, students, independent researchers, and organizations. I enjoy working with community and state partners, such as health departments and non-profit organizations, and I am fortunate to work with collaborators across the world. For instance, I have collaborated on several projects related to health communication and digital affordances with Naiyan Jones, a researcher and data analyst at the UK Office for National Statistics. Dr. Van Dyke and I developed the environmental health lab at UA where we lead projects addressing critical issues relating to wastewater issues and the environment along with other risk related projects.

Outside of academia, I am an artist and enjoy drawing and painting. I do not have much time these days, but below are examples. Many of my pieces begin with sketch on paper. I also enjoy painting in Adobe Photoshop or Procreate. My preferred tools of the trade when I use Procreate is either the Sensu brush or Wacom stylus. When I have time, I enjoy playing video games. I enjoy collecting games and figures of my favorite games (my favorites include the Kiseki series, Atelier, Tales of, Octopath, and many others, including retro games).

You can contact me at rkbritt @ ua.edu (remove the spaces).