Biography

Currently an associate professor at UNLV, Emma Frances Bloomfield studies science communication and public interactions and engagement with science. She is interested in a variety of intersections of science with religion, technology, politics, the economy, digital spaces, and news media.

Bloomfield has published about various scientific topics and how the public understands and responds to them, including topics such as climate change, the environment, evolution, science education, birth control, and religion in politics. As a communication scholar that focuses on rhetoric, she attends to the ways that people use symbols, such as language, to persuade, influence, and make connections with others — particularly in situations where this use of symbols leads to controversy, deliberation, and public concern.

In addition to studying scientific controversies and why they emerge, Bloomfield also researches strategies to curtail the spread of misinformation and strategies to engage science skeptics.