Rate My Professor Lisa Henderson

Lisa Henderson is Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University, previously known as the University of Western Ontario, where she served as Dean from January 1, 2019, to June 30, 2025. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and her B.A. in radio and television arts from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. Henderson began her professional career as a radio production intern in Toronto, producing educational spoken-word content for CJRT FM’s Open College. Before joining Western University, she held the position of Professor of Communication and faculty affiliate in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Henderson's academic interests encompass cultural production, sexual representation, feminist media studies, cultural studies of social class, queer studies, class cultures, ethnographic research methods, textual criticism, and research creation. Her scholarship explores the making of culture through practitioner and scholarly lenses, with current projects focusing on artist/scholar collaborations and friendship as a political form. She has authored over 30 journal articles and book chapters, including the book Love and Money: Queers, Class, and Cultural Production (New York University Press, 2013), a finalist for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies. Other notable publications include 'Communication, Sexuality, Defamiliarization' in the International Journal of Communication (2013), 'Sexual Healing' in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (2011), 'Queer Relay' in GLQ (2008), 'Body Optimism' in the International Journal of Communication (2010), and 'Queers and Class: Toward a Cultural Politics of Friendship' in Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism (2015). Henderson has delivered more than 50 invited lectures and juried conference presentations. Among her honors is the 2011 Roy F. Aarons Award for Outstanding Contribution to LGBT Education and Research from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her work contributes to bridging production practices and academic inquiry in media and cultural studies.