Graduate Students
Mavis Essel
contact information
Email
Office: CIS 3070
biography
Mavis Freeman Essel is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the ÐÜèAVÃâ·Ñ, specializing in health and interpersonal communication. Her research examines the intersections of health communication, gender, culture, resilience, and marginalized experiences, with particular attention to the lived experiences of African women and families.
Grounded in critical and interpretive approaches to communication, Mavis’s scholarship explores how cultural, relational, and institutional structures shape health experiences and communication. Her current research focuses on maternal healthcare communication and Caesarean birth in Ghana, using African feminist perspectives to examine how young mothers navigate healthcare encounters, motherhood, stigma, and resilience. Her broader research interests include maternal and reproductive health communication, African feminisms, communicative resilience, family communication, stigma, migration, and the health experiences of African and Black communities.
Mavis is also passionate about teaching and mentorship. Her teaching emphasizes the connection between communication theory and everyday health experiences, encouraging students to critically consider how communication shapes health, relationships, identity, and well-being across diverse cultural contexts.
Through her research and teaching, Mavis seeks to contribute to more culturally responsive, equitable, and humane approaches to health communication, particularly for communities whose experiences and voices have historically received limited attention in communication and health scholarship.
research areas
Health communication, Gender, Qualitative Methods, New media communication.
advisor
Ambar Basu