Wilfredo Flores, PhD

My name is Wilfredo Flores (or Wil), and I'm an assistant professor of writing, rhetoric, and digital studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I'm a rhetorical scholar and qualitative researcher, and my research and teaching interface the colonial intimacies of science, technology, and medicine. 

My research questions animate from disciplinary conversations within rhetorical studies of health and medicine, settler colonial studies, science and technology studies, and Black and Indigenous studies. In short, I use rhetorical theory to understand the ways settler colonialism and communication shape (non)human livability along the triptych of history, politics, and culture, focusing on biomedical and infrastructural development within colonial contexts. My courses cover the ways media ecologies operate—namely, how dis- and misinformation circulate and how conspiracy theories form and flourish—contemporary critical and rhetorical theory, and health communication with a focus on user experience and user-centered design. Overall, I foreground ethical community engagement practices and sustainable change by assembling theory and practice to build livable futures. 

I'm a co-founder and former organizer of Queering Medicine, and I'm also a co-producer for the Storying Sex podcast and oral history project. I’m also recently a research affiliate with the DISCO Network. Currently, I'm collaborating with faculty across UNCC to set up a digital storytelling lab, so hopefully you’ll hear more about that soon! Either way, I believe scholarship should have a public velocity (and I've been told I have a great radio voice). 

If you'd like to learn more about me as a researcher, check out this research statement. Curious about who I am as a teacher? Check out my teaching philosophy. Finally, if you want to read a longer overview of how I became an academic, check out my longer bio.