Jenny Mandelbaum

Jenny Mandelbaum's research uses the methods of conversation analysis to examine everyday talk-in-interaction. She is particularly interested in how a variety of aspects of the organization of interaction pertain to social relationships and identities. Her work includes studies of storytelling, repair organization, the management of social knowledge (epistemics), and the implementation and consequences of actions like requesting, offering, assessing, and complaining. 

She was a faculty member at Rutgers for nearly 35 years and served as department chair from 2003-2006. She taught Introduction to Communication, Family Communication, Relationships and Identities in Interaction, Qualitative Methods, and Interpersonal Communication. She received the Top Four Competitive Paper Award in the Language and Social Interaction Division at the National Communication Association in 2013, and both the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching Award and the Teaching Excellence Award at Rutgers in 2000.

Among her most eminent publications include “Storytelling in Conversation” in the Handbook of Conversation Analysis by Cambridge University Press (2013). Mandelbaum is currently working with a large database of field video-recordings of families engaged in routine activities to explore how parents and other family members respond to children’s social infractions.

Ph.D., Communication Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
M.A., Communication Studies, The University of Texas
B.A., French and Philosophy, Oxford University

Rutgers University Conversational Analysis Lab (RUCAL)