Deborah B. Yoon: President's Postdoctoral Fellow

Deborah Yoon

Deborah B. Yoon is a 2022–23 President's Postdoctoral Fellow.

Department
Communication Studies

President's Postdoctoral Fellow Program Mentor
Susanne Jones

Undergraduate Institution
Rutger's University

Doctoral Institution
Rutger's University

Dissertation Title
Information Management Strategies that Reduce Uncertainty about Identity and Genetic Family Health History for Adult Adopted Children

Research Interests
Deborah (Deb) Yoon identifies best as an interpersonal, family, and health scholar. As a researcher, she is interested in bridging the gap between theory and practice because she believes that the role of research is to make it applicable for individuals who are not only in academia but those who can utilize research findings in practice. Mainly, her research focuses on identity formation and negotiation as it intersects with uncertainty management practices that arise within nontraditional and/or challenging family systems. She works to explicate identity uncertainty as an experience that is applicable to different circumstances while working to contextualize it within other theories of identity, and further explores the communication processes that shape or reflect these specific experiences. Her work seeks to better understand how nontraditional life experiences can be disruptive and raise questions to an individual’s concept of self, the effects if has on an individual’s communication behavior to mitigate the identity uncertainty, and how communication patterns within these nontraditional systems help shape an individual’s identity as well as how an individual’s identity shapes those relationships. Further, she seeks to examine the associations between identity, identity uncertainty, and information management strategies between nontraditional family members and the individual.

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