Dr. Nicholas A. Palomares (PhD; University of California, Santa Barbara; 2005) joined the Moody College of Communication in the Fall of 2021 as a Professor after being a Professor of Communication at the University of California, Davis for 17 years. Dr. Palomares is a nonbinary (pronouns: they/he/she/Nik), first generation, and Latinx social scientist whose research studies the social cognitive mechanisms of message production and processing. Dr. Palomares seeks to understand how different interpretations and inferences of messages can adversely affect folks in a variety of social setting and contexts, such as when getting bullied online or in more traditional modes of communication; in conversations among friends, coworkers, family members, or dating romantic couples; when receiving political messages from party leaders; when assessing online fact-checking verdicts of potential misinformation; when gender identity influences communication patterns in online and face-to-face interactions; when reading news stories about campus sexual assault among straight and queer students; and when folks interact in other social media settings. Dr. Nik approaches research with a theoretical emphasis on the goals communicators pursue, how they pursue them, and how other people understand those goals. Dr. Nik's work focuses on the fundamental processes of communication that transcend contexts, means, and modes of social interaction with significant implications for social justice issues regarding mental health, queer rights, racism and prejudice, and other meaningful problems society faces.

Dr. Nik’s research has appeared in top journals, such as Human Communication Research; Communication Research; Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking; Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication; Communication Monographs; Atlantic Journal of Communication; International Journal of Communication; Journal of Social and Personal Relationships; and in edited volumes, such as The Handbook of Communication Science and Biology, The Handbook of Intergroup Communication, and The SAGE Handbook of Interpersonal Communication. Dr. Nik is Vice Chair of the Intergroup Communication Interest Group of the International Communication Association (ICA) and was an Associate Editor for Human Communication Research from 2016-2020. Dr. Palomares is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Dr. Nik teaches courses on empirical research methods, gender and communication, intergroup communication, theory construction in communication science, and interpersonal communication. 

In his free time, Nik enjoys going to concerts, playing DnD and the like with friends, riding his fixie, writing fiction, and chilling on the porch with his dog and cat while listening to vinyl on an auspicious Austin afternoon.