Danielle R. Mehlman-Brightwell, PhD

Dr. Danielle R. Mehlman-Brightwell (Ph.D., Indiana University of Pennsylvania) is the founder and director of the Office of Community Outreach and is an assistant professor of Public Policy and Communication at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. She teaches courses in social sciences capstone, rhetoric and public policy, policy practicum, introduction to public policy, political communication, social science internship, communication internship, social science special topics, theories of persuasion, argument, interpersonal communication, and public speaking. She serves as the public policy major advisor for Pitt-Greensburg and the faculty liaison for The Washington Center. Click here for seminar and internship opportunities in Washington, D.C. 

She is passionate about serving underserved communities and is the Principal Investigator of a $250,000 Richard King Mellon grant, which aims to provide economic mobility and educational attainment to underserved communities in Westmoreland and Allegheny counties. She serves as a Board Member on the Entrepreneurship Leadership Council, working in the Southwestern Pennsylvania region to support sustainability with students from over 20 universities. Her team was selected for the Community Engaged Scholarship Project Development cohort and are working closely with Pitt’s Community Engagement Centers in the Hill District and Homewood, developing programming for middle and high school students on career readiness and leadership training.

Along with her doctoral degree in Communications Media and Instructional Technology, Dr. Mehlman-Brightwell's research spans mass communication, political communication, public opinion, and technology policy, using both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, as well as various theoretical frameworks. Her interdisciplinary research publications are in humanities in the Journal of Communication Technology, International Journal of Communication and book chapters, which examine the effects of mass media on citizens' communicative activity and social sciences with social inequities. She serves on the Advisory Board for Lexington Books series Contemporary Perspectives on Social Inequalities in the United States. Her scholarly expertise is in polarization on social media, with a particular interest in media dependency, news credibility, and concern about foreign interference in elections.

Dr. Mehlman-Brightwell also serves as a faculty affiliate in quantitative analysis for the Center for Applied Research (CFAR) at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg and is a member of a team of researchers for the Pitt Disinformation Lab at the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. In addition, she serves as Secretary of Eastern Communication Association Political Communication. Her professional affiliations include the National Communication Association, the Pennsylvania Communication Association, the Eastern Communication Association, and Phi Kappa Phi. In 2022, Dr. Mehlman-Brightwell won the best presenter international award at the Fifth International Conference on the Future of Women, "Defining Women in a New Decade," and was nominated for National Communication Association's Mass Communication Division Dissertation Award.