Maria Venetis

Promoted to Associate Professor
Brian Lamb School of Communication
mvenetis@purdue.edu

Maria Venetis received her Ph.D. in communication from Rutgers University and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in speech communication from the University of Southern Mississippi. She is interested in how we discuss health.

A faculty member in the Brian Lamb School of Communication since 2012, Venetis’ work examines how patients and medical providers communicate about health and health decisions, and how that communication affects patient psychosocial outcomes, like coping and satisfaction, and behavioral outcomes such as disclosure and avoidance.

Venetis is a scholar of interpersonal disclosure, examining processes of how and when individuals decide to share personal and private (and often health-related) information with loved ones, such as ongoing communication concerning cancer and other non-visible health conditions.

She is a faculty affiliate with both the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering and the Center for Poverty and Health Inequality.

Venetis conducts undergraduate and graduate seminars in interpersonal communication and health communication. She also mentors and collaborates with masters and doctoral students. In 2016, she won the Brian Lamb School of Communication’s Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentor Award.