Dr. Shawn J. Parry-Giles is a Professor in the Department of Communication at UMD. She also serves as the Director of the Rosenker Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership. Dr. Parry-Giles studies rhetoric and politics with a focus on the relationship between power and resistance in historical and contemporary politics. She has co-authored and co-edited eight books and a diversity of journal articles on presidential rhetoric, war rhetoric and revolutions, women and politics, as well as media and politics. She teaches classes in democratic deliberation, rhetorical research methods, political communication, and academic writing.

As Director of the Rosenker Center, Dr. Parry-Giles co-edits two public and digital humanities projects designed to promote civic education through open-access websites that exemplify the role of public oratory in local, national, and global politics. Each website features a repository of historical public speeches and teaching resources that contextualize the rhetorical contributions of community activists and political leaders. The first is an academic journal entitled, the Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project (with Drs. J. Michael Hogan and Skye de Saint Felix)—a project initially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The second is the Recovering Democracy Archives: Speech Recovery Project (with Dr. Skye de Saint Felix), which recovers lesser-known speeches from archives of those advancing social justice aims. This project was funded by the Waterhouse Family Institute of Villanova University. Dr. Parry-Giles also helps mentor students in the principles of democratic deliberation to organize public dialogues around pressing political issues. Through the Rosenker Center she also aims to build community partnerships with non-profit political groups working locally to advance student civic engagement.