Lauren N. Seitz, Ph.D.

Education

• Ph.D., Communication, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2025

• M.A., Communication Studies, Colorado State University, 2020

• B.A., summa cum laude, English, French, Ball State University, 2016

Biography

Dr. Lauren Seitz is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the BIC. She received a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, an M.A. in Communication Studies from Colorado State University, and a B.A. in English and French from Ball State University. Dr. Seitz specializes in rhetorical theory and criticism, and her research focuses on understanding the rhetoric of contemporary radical right-wing politics in international and transnational contexts. Her dissertation examines the relationship between right-wing populism and nationalism, a relationship that she argues is central to radical right-wing rhetoric today. As a fluent French speaker, much of her scholarship focuses on the rise of the radical right in France, and she has published on the rhetoric of cultural racism, or "ethnicism," in French electoral politics. She is currently working on a book chapter that analyzes how French politician Marine Le Pen leverages gender and feminism to gain voter support and perpetuate exclusionary discourse.