Dr. Barbara Sharf

Biography

Prior to joining the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, Barbara F. Sharf was a faculty member in the Department of Medical Education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine from 1978 to 1998, serving as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and Head of the Medical Humanities Program. At Texas A&M University from 1998 to 2011, she taught classes on health communication, qualitative research, and narrative inquiry, and helped establish a doctoral program in health communication. She is the author or co-author of more than 75 academic journal articles and book chapters. As a Professor Emerita, she continues to live in Durham, North Carolina, and remains active in conducting and publishing research. Her scholarship focuses on qualitative forms of investigative analysis, particularly narrative inquiry, and she applies her studies to health communication. Her research interests include communication in clinical settings, patients' experiences with illness, cultural influences on healthcare, health disparities related to race/ethnicity, class, and geographic location, and the portrayal of health and illness in popular media. Over the past decade, her focus has been on integrative approaches to healthcare in the U.S., exploring how conventional biomedicine interfaces with complementary and alternative forms of healing.

Research Interests

Experience