::People
Professor Andrew Chadwick - Co-Director (on post-Head of Department sabbatical research leave)
Andrew Chadwick is Professor of Political Science. He was Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London (for the standard three-year term) from July 2006 to July 2009 and and led the expansion of the Department, which saw it more than double in size during those three years. He founded the New Political Communication Unit in 2007. His new book is The Handbook of Internet Politics, co-edited with Philip N. Howard (Routledge, 2008, 512pp. Paperback edition, 2009). His last book was Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies (Oxford University Press, 2006, 400pp), which won the American Sociological Association Outstanding Book Award for 2007 (Communication and Information Technologies Section). Andrew is Editor of the new Oxford University Press book series Oxford Studies in Digital Politics, and Founding Associate Editor (2006-09) and Senior Editorial Board member (ongoing) of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP), the journal of the organized section on Information Technology & Politics (ITP) of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He is also a member of the NSF-funded International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policymaking and a founding member of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on the Internet and Politics. He has recently completed editing a special issue of JITP entitled "Politics: Web 2.0", which published in August 2009. In recent times Andrew has made several national and local broadcast media appearances, including on BBC Radio Four's Thinking Allowed, The Moral Maze, and The World at One, as well as Sky News. He has been interviewed for articles in the national press, including The Independent, the Daily Telegraph, and the New Scientist, among others. Andrew is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce ("the RSA"). He is currently working on his next book, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. He adds to his tumblelog at http://www.andrewchadwick.com.
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Dr Ben O'Loughlin - Co-Director
Ben O'Loughlin is Reader in International Relations. He specialises in international political communication, particularly the relationship between media, war, new security challenges and conflict. He is co-investigator on the ESRC-funded project, Legitimising the Discourses of Radicalisation: Political Violence in the New Media Ecology and lead investigator on the Technology Strategy Board-funded project on the Monitoring of complex information infrastructure by mining external signals. He was formerly a researcher on the ESRC project Shifting Securities: News Cultures Before and Beyond the Iraq War, part of the New Security Programme. His research addresses the role of ideas in politics, from various theoretical positions (as discourse, ideology, narrative), the processes involved (mediation, diffusion, translation, flows/flux, institutionalisation), and how these bear upon important political outcomes (persuasion, legitimacy, representation and identity). Ben's book is now out in paperback, Television And Terror: Conflicting Times And The Crisis Of News Discourse. He is also Co-Editor of the new journal, Media, War and Conflict (Sage).
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Akil N. Awan
Akil is an RCUK Fellow based in the Department of History. Previously he served as a key researcher on the ESRC project Shifting Securities: News Cultures Before and Beyond the Iraq War. He is an active member of the Muslims in Britain Academic Research Network. Among his research specialisms are the function, legitimacy, and radicalising efficacy of virtual Jihadist media and the use of the Internet by Jihadist groups.
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Dr Oliver Heath
Oliver Heath joined the Department of Politics and International Relations in September 2008 as a Lecturer in Politics, having previously held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Essex and an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Methodology Institute, LSE. He has held visiting positions at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi India, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Caracas Venezuela, and the Centre for the Study of Political Change, Siena Italy. His research interests include democratisation, political stability and electoral realignment in second wave democracies; political participation and electoral behaviour in Britain; and research methods.
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Dr James Sloam
James Sloam is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations. His research interests are: political parties, the role of new media in young people's democratic engagment, German politics, European social democracy.
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Research Assistants
Lawrence Ampofo
Lawrence is a Research Assistant on Ben O'Loughlin's Technology Strategy Board-funded project on the Monitoring of complex information infrastructure by mining external signals. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations. He holds an MSc in International Security and Global Governance from Birkbeck College, University of London (2007). His thesis is concerned with the emergence of new Internet technologies and how these will impact upon French Terrorist organisations in particular.
Current PhD Students
Lawrence Ampofo
Lawrence is a PhD candidate in the department of Politics and International Relations, supervised by Dr Ben O'Loughlin. He holds an MSc in International Security and Global Governance from Birkbeck College, University of London (2007). His thesis, is concerned with the emergence of new Internet technologies and how these will impact upon French Terrorist organisations in particular.
Christopher Frazier-Crawford Boerl
Christopher Frazier-Crawford Boerl is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations, supervised by Professor Andrew Chadwick. He is researching the Internet's role in civic engagement, mobilization and social capital, based on an analysis of the role of religious organizations in US politics.
Chris Perkins
Chris has a BA in Japanese Contemporary Society and Education Studies from Oxford Brookes University, with one year spent studying at Kitakyushu University in southern Japan. After two years teaching in Gifu, Japan, he returned to the UK and completed an MSc in International Relations at Royal Holloway College. His PhD thesis in the Department of Politics and International Relations, supervised by Dr Ben O'Loughlin, focuses on how images of foreignness are constructed in Japan, and what this can tell us about current theories of cultural exchange, the nation and globalization. Chris is Reviews Editor of the journal Media, War & Conflict.
Recently Completed PhDs
Dr Nick Anstead
Nick was a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations (supervised by Professor Andrew Chadwick) and, from September 2008, a lecturer in politics at the University of East Anglia. Nick holds a BA in Modern History from the University of Oxford, and an MA in The Politics of Democracy (with Distinction) from Royal Holloway. His thesis, 'A Comparative Study of the Impact of the Internet on Political Campaigning and Communications in the United States and the United Kingdom' was concerned with how structural differences between the British and American party systems shape political uses of the Internet during election campaigns.
Dr Yenn Lee
Yeon-ok Lee (Yenn Lee) was a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations, supervised by Professor Andrew Chadwick. She holds an MA in Mass Communications from the University of Leicester (2000). She completed a DEA (Diplôme d'Études Approfondies) in Communication and Information Sciences at l'Université Stendhal Grenoble III, France, and joined the Department in October 2004. Her PhD thesis focused on civic engagement and the Internet, on the basis of a case study of presidential elections in South Korea.
Dr Guido Reinke
Guido's thesis (part-time), supervised by Professor Andrew Chadwick, investigates the policy-making process for EU ICT policy, and focuses in particular on the role played by business organisations in defining the the EU's Information Society project.
Visiting and Affiliated Academic Staff
Maria Luisa Azpíroz
Maria Luisa Azpíroz is a PhD candidate in the University of Navarra (Spain). Her PhD thesis focuses on public diplomacy in the “War on Terror” and its impact on European media. Maria was a Visiting Graduate Student from September to December 2008.
Dr Marco Cinnirella
Dr Marco Cinnirella (B.Sc., Ph.D. London) is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has published widely on the social psychology of public reactions to European integration and, more broadly, aspects of social identity, stereotyping and prejudice. He also has expertise in social-psychological approaches to ethnic and national identity, patriotism, prejudice and group dynamics. His research employs a range of methodologies, from experimental social psychology to qualitative interviewing, focus groups and attitude questionnaires. His current research projects include analysis of the extent to which cross-cultural difference is present in online communication contexts, and social psychological studies of acculturation.
Professor John Ellis
John Ellis is based in the Department of Media Arts. His research interests include the nature of TV as a medium: what distinguishes it from other media, the nature of its appeal to viewers, and how it works as an industry and a cultural form. These issues are examined in different ways in his books TV FAQ, Seeing Things and Visible Fictions. He is especially interested in specific genres of TV and audio-visual: factual and documentary styles; series or repetitive narrative forms; light entertainment and 'people shows'. He also examines the impact of moving images forms on modern culture and the institutions of TV and of cultural policy in general.
Dr Mary Francoli
Mary Francoli was Leverhulme Visiting Fellow in New Media and Internet Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations in 2006-2007. She is interested in the impact of new media such as the Internet on governance, the state and society. Currently, her research is largely focused on the idea of the 'digital commons and how new forms of 'e-participation' impact the relationship between citizens and their elected representatives. She has also been looking at how governments – particularly the Canadian government – are adopting e-government strategies, and researching the institutional and policy changes that are required for these strategies to be realised. Beyond issues related to e-government and e-democracy, she is interested in challenges that new technologies – including spam, VoIP and satellite radio – pose for communication policies and communication industries. Mary teaches in the Department of Communication at Carleton University, Ottawa.
Dr Mike Jensen
Mike grew up in Southern California. After a brief detour to Iowa, he returned to Southern California to pursue a Ph.D. in political science. He completed his dissertation, entitled “Electronic Democracy in America: The Internet and Participation in American Local Politics,” in the autumn of 2007. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Irvine's Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO), continuing his work on the Internet and politics. Mike’s hobbies include hiking and beer brewing. Mike was a Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher during the autumn of 2008.
Dr Ashok Jashapara
Ashok is Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Management in the School of Management. His research interests include: knowledge sharing, including practices of communication, social practices and technical interventions; the impact of information and knowledge inequities/poverty between industrialised and developing nations; critical realism and philosophical approaches to organisational knowledge; the development of information systems from a socio-technical and socio-cognitive perspective; and the implementation of knowledge management strategies and interventions in organisations. Ashok serves as a Trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Dr Lina Khatib
Lina Khatib is an expert on media in the Middle East, particularly cinema in the Arab world and Iran, Arab television and new media. Formerly a member of the Deaprtment of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, Lina is now Program Manager at the Center for Democracy, Development the Rule of Law at Stanford University (within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies), managing their new Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World. Lina's work focuses on the relationship between media and politics as well as social issues. She is also a political media analyst and consultant specializing in the Middle East. She has been involved in a number of international workshops and conferences on topics such terrorism and the new media, Arab-Israeli relations, and media, democracy and terrorism in the Arab world and has featured in media outlets across the globe, most recently on Al-Jazeera, BBC World (Arabic Service) and CNN International. Lina is the editor of the Journal of Media Practice, and serves on the editorial boards of New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, and Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture.
Professor Duska Rosenberg
Duska Rosenberg is Professor in Information and Communications Management in the School of Management. Her research interests include analysis and design of shared information environments, computer-mediated communication, natural language interaction in media and virtual spaces, information sharing, and the use of intranets in geographically dispersed organisations.
Dr Kostas Stathis
Kostas Stathis is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include : social computing; representation of human-computer or computer-computer interaction as a game; cognitive and autonomous agents; artificial agent societies; agent communication; programmable agents; and agent platforms. His current work is supported by the IST FP6 Programme and the London Development Agency. In the past Kostas' work has been funded by IST FP5, Vodafone Foundation, Nuffield Foundation, and the Italian Ministry of Education.
Academic Visitors: Please note that we do not normally accept unsolicited applications for temporary visiting positions outside of when we advertise. Advertisements inviting applications for visiting positions will be placed on the Unit's home page and publicised internationally from time to time.