Dr. Benjamin Garner serves as assistant professor of management in the Mike Cottrell College of Business at the University of North Georgia. Dr. Garner has served on the board of directors for the nonprofit Downtown Lawrence Farmers' market in Lawrence, Kansas. Benjamin's research examines customer-farmer interaction at farmers' markets. His work looks at issues of sustainable consumption, interpersonal relationships, and marketing of local products. Benjamin is also producing two documentary films on local food and farmers' markets.

As part of the Mike Cottrell College of Business, Benjamin's focus is to teach students how to communicate effectively in organizational settings.

• Ph.D., Communication Studies, University of Kansas, 2014
• M.A., Anthropology, University of Arkansas, 2010
• B.A., General Studies, Harding University, 2008

Anthony, S., Garner, B. (2016). Teaching Soft Skills to Business Students: An Analysis of Multiple Pedagogical Methods. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 79(3), 360 –370.

Garner, B. (2015). Conflicting Communication: The Visual Rhetoric of Slow Food. Communication Today, 6(2), 112-119.

Garner, B. (2015). Interpersonal Coffee Drinking Communication Rituals and Applications for Business Relationships. International Journal of Marketing and Business Communication, 4(4), 1-12.

Garner, B. (2015). Communication at Farmers' Markets: Commodifying Relationships, Community, and Morality. Journal of Creative Communications, 10(2), 186-198 

Kunkel, A., Dennis, M.R., Garner, B. (2014). Illustrating an integrated typology of meaning reconstruction in discourse: Grief-related disclosures. Death Studies, 38(10), 623-636.

Garner, B. (2014). iPod use and perception of social introversion. Leisure Studies, 33(1), 22-31.

Garner, B. (2012). The changing nature of the coffee shop in the 21st century: How productivity is supplanting social interaction. Iowa Journal of Communication, 44, 202-219.

Book Chapters 

Garner, B. (2014). Vote with your fork: Embodied performance as voice at the farmers' market. In Steve Depoe & Jennifer Peeples (Ed.), Voice and Environmental Communication (pp. 148-169). Palgrave MacMillan.