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Barbara J. O'Keefe (AB, AM, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Dean of the School of Communication and Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. Prior to Northwestern, she was a Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan and Director of the UM Media Union, a center for development and application of advanced communication and information technologies. She has also served on the faculty at Wayne State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

She has studied the development of communication competence across the lifespan as well as the impact of collaboration and learning technologies on individuals and groups, and she is currently a partner in a multi-year, cross-institutional project to guide and promote development of improved interactive media for children. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Markle Foundation, the University of Illinois, and Illinova Corporation. She is the author or co-author of over 75 articles, reviews, and chapters in books and refereed conference proceedings. She co-edited Rethinking Communication: Vol. 1, Paradigm Issues (1989) and Rethinking Communication: Vol. II, Paradigm Exemplars, surveys of the state-of-the-art in communication theory and research.

Her work has earned special recognition from the National Communication Association, the International Communication Association, and the American Forensics Association. She has served as an associate editor or reviewer for such journals as Communication Monographs, Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Language and Social Psychology, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Argumentation, Argumentation and Advocacy, and the International Journal of Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.