Dr. Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock is a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), where she also serves as the Director of The UNCW Storytellers, Hawk Tale Players, and Just Us: Performance Troupe for Social Justice. Additionally, she is the co-director of UNCW Performance Ethnography. All members of these troupes are students enrolled in her classes.
Her research primarily explores Personal Narrative as a Performance of Identity in Daily Life, focusing on stigmatized embodiment. Dr. Scott-Pollock has published various articles in prestigious journals such as Text and Performance Quarterly, Qualitative Inquiry, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and Departures in Critical Qualitative Research.
Dr. Scott-Pollock has received numerous accolades throughout her career. She was honored with the National Communication Association’s (NCA) Ethnographic Article of the Year Award, Best Ethnographic Book Award, and Best Book Chapter Award. Her acclaimed book, Embodied Performance as Research, Art, and Pedagogy, was published by Palgrave MacMillan and earned the Lilla A Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies and the Best Book in Ethnography from the NCA. She also received the Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teaching in Higher Education. In 2022, she earned the Ellis-Bochner Research Award for Autoethnography and Narrative Ethnography from the Society for Symbolic Interaction. In 2023, she received a Presidential Citation for Service from the NCA for her work in accessibility and the NCA Mid-Career Award in Ethnography.
At UNCW, Dr. Scott-Pollock has been recognized with The Distinguished Teaching Professorship Award, The Distinguished Scholarly Engagement and Public Service Award, The Chancellor's Teaching Excellence Award, and the Janet Ellerby Women's and Gender Studies Award. In 2024, she received the North Carolina Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching honor in the state.
In her local community, Dr. Scott-Pollock was named the 2015 "Woman to Watch in Education" by Wilma Magazine: Wilmington's Successful Women and the 2018 YWCA Woman of Achievement for the Cape Fear region. Her one-woman show Gazed At: Stories of a Mortal Body was selected for the 2020 Cucalorus Film and Performance Festival, served as the Plenary Performance for the 2021 International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, and its recorded livestream received the National Communication Association’s Aural and Visual Ethnography Award.
Beyond her professional achievements, Dr. Scott-Pollock is deeply committed to accessible storytelling and social justice, a passion she shares with her family. She and her husband, Evan Scott-Pollock, are the proud parents of four boys—Tony, Vinny, Nico, and Theo—and a daughter, Rosalie. Their love and support have been instrumental in making UNCW Performance Studies a reality.
