Ph.D. Candidate (ABD 2008) Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego

M.A. in Communication, University of California, San Diego 2007

B.S. in Psychology, University College London 2004
Special Emphasis: Evolutionary Psychology

n.
Special Emphasis: Evolutionary Psychology

I am interested in the communication practices that help create and sustain small cultural groups and facilitate relations within and among these groups.  I look at the microgenesis and evolution of the practices and artifacts that constitute small group cultures (idiocultures) and the construction and maintenance of group boundaries. My primary focus is on university student communities, both in on-campus activities and in off-campus academic service learning contexts. Of particular interest are the skills students develop during their university experience that enable them to build small learning communities, the relationships between these campus communities and the larger host culture, and how the repertoire of skills our students take away from the university may or may not serve them in their future pursuits.  I pay special attention to the negotiation of cultural (socio-economic, ethnic, racial) boundaries in an effort to better understand the ways group membership impacts university experience. A second and interrelated focus of my research is on the design and implementation of social learning environments, both on and off the university campus.

I am a member of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition where a common grounding in Cultural/Historical Activity Theory facilitates collaboration on issues of development and change.   

Q-Methodology 
Simulation
Ethnographic Interviewing

COHI 130 Cross-cultural Communication (Spring 2009)
COMT 115/HDP 115 Media and the Design of Social Learning Contexts (Winter 2009)
COMT 115/HDP 115 Media and the Design of Social Learning Contexts (Fall 2008))
COHI 130 Cross-Cultural Communication (Spring 2008)

COHI 124 Deaf People in America  (TA Fall, 2007)
COCU 100 Intro Communication and Culture  (TA Spring, 2007)
COHI 100 Intro Communication and the Person  (TA Winter, 2006) 
Com 115 The Design and Implementation of Social Learning Environments (TA Fall, 2006)

2009 Contemplative Heart of Higher Education Conference at Amherst College. Presentation: Creating Spaces and Tools for Unpacking Personal Cultural Inheritance and Introducing Cultural Change.

2009 American Education Research Association. AERA Annual Meeting, San Diego. Presentation: Student Ethnographers: embedded research as a method for the development of a critical understanding of the processes that create and sustain cultural groups.

2008 Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Menlo Mountain Retreat for Academics in Higher Education.

2008 Meeting of the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research. ISCAR San Diego. Design Experimentation and Mutual Appropriation: Two Strategies for Creating Development-enhancing Activity Systems. Michael Cole, Deborah Downing-Wilson & Robert Lecusay. Keynote address delivered by Michael Cole.

2007 Conference of the International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity.  National Medical Library, Bethesda MD.  Paper presentation:  Using Q method to investigate attitude change in undergraduate students.

2007 Conference on Changing the Culture of the Academy. UC Berkeley

2007 Western Conference on Service-Learning,  Point Loma Nazarene College

Downing-Wilson, Deborah. (2008) The Microgenesis of Idiocultures. Dissertation Prospectus Defended August 21, 2008

Downing-Wilson, Deborah. (2008) Borderwork in the Fifth Dimension. Qualifying Research Defended August 21, 2008.

Downing-Wilson, Deborah. (2008) Revealing Undergraduates’ Shifts in Attitude Toward Teaching and Learning Via Participation in Academic Service Learning. Qualifying Research Defended August 21, 2008.

Downing-Wilson, Deborah (2008) Revealing Shifts in Attitude among Undergraduates Participating in Academic Service Learning Programs. Operant Subjectivity: Journal of the International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity. Vol 30, 1-2, pp. 23-51.

Downing-Wilson, Deborah, Lecusay, Robert and Cole, Michael. (2009) Design Experimentation and Mutual Appropriation: Two Strategies for University/Community Collaborative After School Interventions. Theory and Psychology: special issue on cultural-historical activity theory and interventionist methodology: classical legacy and contemporary developments.

Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition, (2009). "Qualitative research: Cultural-historical activity theory" In: Barry McGaw, Penelope Peterson and Eva Baker (Eds.) International Encyclopedia of Education, 3rd edition. Elsevier.