Police found Deborah Kaplan, a UW assistant professor of communication, dead in her home yesterday of apparent natural causes, according to the King County Medical Examiner's Office.

Kaplan began teaching at the UW after earning her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005.

She was 53.

At the time of her death, Kaplan was working on a book about the interaction of homelessness, politics and the media in Tucson, Ariz.

During her 18-year career as a journalist, she worked as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press and an editor of the Metro Times alternative weekly in Detroit.

Additional details about her death were not available at press time.