Garrett Wagner is an interdisciplinary legal and communications scholar studying the relationship between public health and the First Amendment. Her work combines both legal and communication research methods to investigate the impacts of health-driven media regulations on freedoms of speech and their impact on audiences.

She was a Roy H. Park Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2013 to 2019, during which time she earned a master’s and a doctoral degree in mass communication and was honored with the 2019 Rachel Davis Mersey Outstanding Ph.D. Student award from the School of Media and Journalism. She has authored or co-authored seven peer-reviewed publications and 14 conference papers.