Director, ICIC
Chancellor’s Professor of English
Barbara E. and Karl R. Zimmer Chair in Intercultural Communication
Program Director, M.A. in TESOL
uconnor@iupui.edu
(317) 278-2441
Office location: Cavanaugh Hall 134
Ulla Connor, Ph.D. is the Barbara E. and Karl R. Zimmer Chair in Intercultural Communication, Chancellor’s Professor of English, and Director of the International Center for Intercultural Communication at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.
Dr. Connor received her B.A. and M.A. in English philology from the University of Helsinki, an M.A. in English literature from the University of Florida, an M.A. in comparative literature and Ph.D. in English linguistics from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Connor has held academic positions at the University of Florida, University of Wisconsin, George Mason University, Georgetown University, Purdue University, and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She has also held guest and visiting professor positions in linguistics and applied linguistics with Temple University in Japan, Lund University in Sweden, Åbo Akademi University in Finland, and Leon University in Spain. She is an elected foreign member of Societas Scientiarum Fennica (Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters).
Dr. Connor has authored and co-authored 10 books and over 100 articles and book chapters, including Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of second-language writing (Cambridge U. P., 1996), and Intercultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom (U. of Michigan P., 2012). In her research on writing and intercultural communication, Dr. Connor combines theories and methods from both linguistics, classical rhetoric, and psychology. Results of her intercultural research have been applied in ESL and EFL, intercultural business communication, and, most recently, the language of health care among U.S. immigrant populations. This research focuses on the language use between health care providers and chronically ill patients, including patients diagnosed with addictions. She is the Chief Scientific Officer for CoMac Analytics, Inc.