➥  Media governance
➥  European integration, media and communicative spaces
➥  Media technologies, human rights and social change
➥  Gender and media policy
➥  Global political economy and the media

Katharine Sarikakis is professor of Communication Science and heads the Media Governance and Industries Research Lab. She is the Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Communication, Facts and regulation for Europe (FREuDe). Her research interests focus on transformation, process of decision-making and power relations in media governance. Her work encompasses the empirical and theoretical development of the concept of media governance through the study of institutions, regulatory frameworks, the role of civic engagement and ethics, at European and global levels. From a governance object specific perspective, her work has been investigating the areas of privacy, hate speech, audiovisual cultures including the role of archives, and dis/information under the lens of human rights and civil liberties. Katharine's research includes, in an integrative way, feminism and gender.

Katharine's paedagogy is based on the Socratic method of enquiry, valuing and integrating personal and social experience in learning and in self-reflecting as a tool to develop knowledge and on the principle that academic and scientific enquiry is connected to the social world. Katharine's research informed and social connected teaching work was awarded with the European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as the University of Vienna Teaching Award (in 2018) and was a nominee for the Austrian State Award in Excellence in Teaching in 2019.

She has held the Santander Chair of Excellence, and was a visiting senior scholar with the London School of Economics and Political Science in recent years. Earlier she has held the Anders Foundation Chair in Global Media at Karlstad University, and was a McGill University visiting fellow with the Centre for research and training on women.

Katharine has served on major Communication journals and has been coediting the Journal of Media and Cultural Politics since its foundation.

Katharine's transdisciplinary work in policies can also be seen in her collaborations with international organisations, such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe, as well as European organisations for freedom of expression. If you are interested in working under Katharine's supervision towards your PhD, please send a CV, a sample of writing, a letter of motivation and a research proposal outline of one page.