- Associate Professor, Chair of the Department of Professional and Public Writing
- Professional and Public Writing
- Email: timothy_amidon@uri.edu
- Office Location: Roosevelt Hall, Rm 319
Biography
Dr. Amidon is an alum, Associate Professor, and Chair of the Professional and Public Writing Department within the Harrington School of Communication at URI. Prior to returning to URI, he was a tenured member of the faculty at Colorado State University where he held an appointment in the Department of English and the Colorado School of Public Health. During his time at CSU, he served as Co-Director of WESTFIRE, an interdisciplinary research center focused on wildfire and smoke, a Leadership Fellow in the Office for the Vice President for Research, and other leadership roles within the University Writing Program.
His research program spans the fields of digital rhetoric, technical and professional communication, and public health. His scholarship has appeared in journals such as Technical Communication Quarterly, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Technical Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and Communication Design Quarterly. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief for Communication Design Quarterly. Additionally, he has nearly 25 years of industry experience in fire and emergency services, having served the Windsor Severance Fire Rescue (CO), Wellington Fire Protection District (CO), Westerly Fire Department (RI), and the Rhode Island Fire Academy (RI) as firefighter/emergency medical technician, technical rescuer, fire instructor, and/or fire officer.
Research
Risk communication; user experience design; rhetorics of data and technology; data visualization; qualitative and community-engaged research methodology; visual rhetoric; rhetoric of health and medicine.
Education
Ph.D., English with a Specialization in Rhetoric and Composition, University of Rhode Island
M.A., English, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne.
B.A. Political Science and English, University of Rhode Island
Selected Publications
Pflugfelder, Ehren H., Amidon, Timothy R., Sackey, Donnie J., & Richards, Daniel P. (2023).
Expanding the scope and scale of risk in Technical and Professional Communication. Water access
and the Colorado River. Technical Communication Quarterly, 32(3), 224-241. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2023.2210194
Moore, Kristen R., Amidon, Timothy R., & Simmons, W. Michele. (2023). Equity and inclusion as
workplace practices: A four step process for moving to action. Technical Communication, 70(3),
7-27. https://doi.org/10.55177/tc710097
Amidon, Timothy R., Nielsen, Alex C., Pflugfelder, Ehren H., Richards, Daniel P., & Stephens, Sonia
H. (2021). Visual risk literacy in “Flatten the Curve” COVID-19 visualizations. Journal of Business
and Technical Communication. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651920963439
Amidon, Timothy R. (2020). Brightness behind the eyes: Rendering firefighters’ tacit literacies visible.
Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 25(1), Special issue on Data Viz in Writing
Studies (Guest editors John Gallagher & Dànielle N. DeVoss). Retrieved from http://
kairos.technorhetoric.net/25.1/inventio/amidon/index.html
Amidon, Timothy R., Williams, Elizabeth, Lipsey, Tiffany, Callahan, Randy, Nuckols, Gary, & Rice,
Spencer. (2017). Sensors and gizmos and data, oh my: Informating firefighters’ protective personal
equipment. Communication Design Quarterly, 5(4), 15-30. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10059804