Dr. SunWolf is a nationally recognized scholar on jury deliberations, group dynamics, and social influence. She was a trial attorney, appellate attorney, and the former Training Director for Colorado’s Public Defender Office. She is now Professor of Communication at SCU, teaching persuasion, friendships & romances, group dynamics, conflict, and multicultural folktales. Her books translate social science for trial attorneys and her upcoming book (“God-Thinking”) bridges neuroscience, religion, and a juror’s moral brain.

From her study of juries, she published a new theory of group communication (Decisional Regret Theory) that describes how people facing salient decisions engage in counterfactual thinking and storied talk with others, in an attempt to avoid unwanted decisional outcomes. She serves on the editorial boards of three national journals (Communication Monographs, Small Group Research, & the Journal of Applied Communication Research).

• 2008, SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY AWARD FOR RECENT ACHIEVEMENT IN SCHOLARSHIP (faculty member whose scholarly work over the previous five years represents a major contribution to a field of knowledge)

• 2008, ERNEST BORMANN BOOK AWARD, Nation Communication Association, most outstanding scholarly book in the previous two years, for Practical Jury Dynamics2: From One Juror’s Trial Perceptions to the Group’s Decision-Making Processes (LexisNexis)

• 2005, MOST OUTSTANDING SCHOLARLY ARTICLE, National Communication Association, Applied Communication Division for “Being left out: Rejecting outsiders and communicating group boundaries in childhood adolescent peer groups.”

• 2005, AWARD FOR CAREER DEDICATION TO PRO BONO WORK, The American Society of Trial Consultants: “In honor of your efforts to ensure compelling advocacy for indigent and capital defendants.”

• 2000, MOST OUTSTANDING SCHOLARLY ARTICLE, Dennis S. Gouran Research Award, National Communication Association, Group Communication Division, for “Jurors’ intuitive rules for deliberation.”
 

Trial Advocacy, Jury Law, Group Dynamics, Social Influence, Narrative Communication