Name: Madison Jones
URI Title: Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and Natural Resource Science
Email: madisonjones@uri.edu
Pronouns: he/him/his
Three adjectives he’d use to describe himself: Energetic, Hardworking, and Creative

New Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric (WRT) and Natural Resources Science (NRS) Madison Jones is the perfect example of how multiple disciplines combine to further one another. Jones joins the URI community from the University of Florida, where he received his Ph.D. in May 2020. According to Jones, “My dissertation Writing, Place, Network: Scale and Digital Rhetoric used place-based theories to better understand writing in networked environments.” 

Jones’ dissertation topic ties heavily into the research interests he looks forward to pursuing at URI. “My research combines place-based writing with locative media (such as AR/VR and digital maps) for public environmental communication projects,” he says. “An example of this work is EcoTour, an augmented reality walking tour in a Florida state park. I’m excited to work with students to build public-facing digital projects like these for the Rhody community. I am also interested in using rhetorical historiography to better understand how science has influenced what we call the ‘ecological turn’ in writing studies.”

For the Fall 2020 semester, Jones is currently teaching two courses through the WRT department: Science Writing (WRT 334) and Seminar in Graduate Writing in the Life Sciences (WRT 533). He looks forward to teaching a course in the NRS department in the spring. For advice to both WRT and NRS students, Jones looks to his own experience with the written word. “My writing advice to students is ‘early and often,’” he advises. “I get my best writing done in the early hours when the house is quiet, and I am free from obligations and distractions.”

~Written by Chase Hoffman, Writing and Rhetoric and Anthropology Double Major, URI Class of December 2020