Ivana Guarrasi, Ph.D.

Education

• Ph.D. in Communication from University of California San Diego
• M.A. in Linguistics from California State University Long Beach
• M.A. in British and American Studies from University of Presov, Slovakia
• M.A. in Aesthetics from University of Presov, Slovakia

Biography

Teaching and learning are central to Ivana Guarrasi’s professional practice, research agenda, and her identity as a scholar. Examining clinical simulations in medical and nursing education, her work is situated at the intersection of interdisciplinary communication studies, science and technology studies (STS), and critical health communication. She uses ethnographic approaches to trace the challenging task of incorporating a believable patient simulation into healthcare training.

Her scholarship centers on the problem of scientifically reducing complex, embodied, and affective human behavior to biomedical and technical scales to produce an institutionally configured medical standard. Guarrasi earned her Ph.D. in Communication from University of California San Diego, where she previously taught courses on language, intercultural communication, interpersonal communication, simulation, human development, and cultural studies of mind.

Her experiences teaching in two different educational systems, in the United States and previously in Slovakia, ground her commitment to pedagogical design conceived as a purposeful cultural intervention in human development that is age-specific, psychologically informed, and culturally responsive. She is currently an editor of the international journal Mind, Culture, and Activity.

Recent Publications

• Guarrasi, I. & Jornet, A. (2025). Affective Contextures of Collective Care: Sustainability in Nursing Work. In Rajala, A., Cortez, A., Hofmann, R., Jornet, A., Lotz-Sisitka, H., & Markauskaite, L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2025 (pp. 1928-1932). International Society of the Learning Sciences.

• Guarrasi, I., Hopwood, N., Blunden, A., Wright, D. F. B., Anakin, M. (2025). Foundational concepts in cultural-historical activity theory: A missing opportunity to address challenges in pharmacy practice. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, 21(6), 487–493.

• Kerber, A., Guarrasi, I., Chiou, H. S., Ehmke, S., Oeding, K., & Sekimoto, S. (2024). Garden EngAGEment: Cultivating cultures of care through artful place-making. Health Communication, 1–11.

• Guarrasi, I., Cornell, R., & Clemenson, S. (2024). Interprofessional collaboration as a feminist pedagogy: A call for the unsettling of care in health professions education. Feminist Pedagogy, 5(1), Article 6.

• Guarrasi, I. (2022). “The Heart of the Simulated Matter: Interprofessional Training Practices of Clinical Care." In Making Sense of Medicine: Material Culture and the Reproduction of Medical Knowledge, John Nott and Anna Harris (Eds.). Bristol, UK & Chicago, USA: Intellect, 205-217.
• Jornet-Gil, A., Guarrasi, I., Rajala, A. (2020). “LCHC's Expanding Bio-geographies: A glimpse to the future(s) through the case of the Re-generating CHAT project." Mind, Culture & Activity, 27(2).
• Guarrasi, I. (2019). Semiotic Body of a Standardized Patient as a Map of Clinical Practice. Versus - Quaderni di studi semiotici 129(2), 333-362.
• Guarrasi, I. (2015). Residual Categories in Medical Simulation: The Role of Affect in the Performance of Disease. Mind, Culture, and Activity 22(2), 112-128.