Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy People

Professor Natalie Fenton, Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies

Natalie Fenton is the Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy. She has published widely on issues relating to civil society, radical politics, digital media, news and journalism and is particularly interested in issues of political transformation, radical media reform and re-imagining democracy.

She was vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the campaign group Hacked Off for seven years and is a founding member and former Chair of the UK Media Reform Coalition. She is also on the Board of Declassified UK an investigative journalism website for in-depth analysis on British foreign policy.

Her books include 'New Media: Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age' (Sage, 2010); 'Misunderstanding the Internet 2nd Edition co-authored with James Curran and Des Freedman' (Routledge, 2016); 'Digital, Political, Radical' (2016, Polity); 'Media, Democracy and Social Change: Re-imagining Political Communications' co-authored with Des Freedman, Gholam Khiabany and Aeron Davis' (Sage, 2020) and 'The Media Manifesto co-authored with Des Freedman, Justin Schlosberg and Lina Dencik' (Polity, 2020); and 'Democratic Delusions: How the media hollowed out democracy and what we can do about it' (Polity, 2024).

Annika Weiss

Annika Weiss is a PhD candidate in the Media and Communications and Cultural Studies department at Goldsmiths, University of London, whose research examines film labour conditions in Germany and the UK. She is a former freelance camera assistant in the German and UK film industry and a climate activist, volunteering for Greenpeace to organise and mobilise political solutions to the climate crisis. Annika is an advocate for more participatory politics, like the integration of citizen’s assemblies into public media and political institutions. Her research interests include the political economy of the media, media policy, affective politics and social movements.

Assiya Amini

Assiya Majgan Amini is a doctoral candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on loss, memory and missing narratives, particularly those of the elderly within the UK’s Afghan community. She is also the co-founder of Afghan Academy International and has instigated a range of interactive projects designed to promote peace, unity, education, culture and the arts. Examples include organising the annual Afghan International Peace Conference & Festival and establishing Britain’s first Afghan Library and Peace Centre – endeavours that have opened up an active discourse on Afghanistan and engaged many stakeholders. For Assiya, the safeguarding of people from war-torn countries and their rich heritage remains a priority.

Hiya Deb

Hiya Deb is an experienced filmmaker and editor working across various formats. Currently pursuing a PhD in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and holding an MA in Filmmaking from Kingston University, she has a strong foundation in both practical filmmaking and teaching. Her PhD research delves into Dalit refugee narratives and transgenerational trauma through creative documentary filmmaking, with a focus on marginalized communities. Hiya explores how visual storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for healing and representation. For her post-doctoral research, she plans to broaden this work, examining migration, trauma, and identity through creative practices like film, theatre, and participatory media in displaced communities.

Marcos Ortiz

Marcos Ortiz is a PhD candidate researching Chile’s traditional print media. In this endeavour he investigates institutions of power that prevail from the Pinochet years to revisit and reinvigorate Western theorisations of media power and ideology from a Global South perspective. He has worked as journalist, scriptwriter, editor and political consultant. He is the director of Ojo del Medio, a digital platform aimed at critically analysing Chilean media. Marcos’ research lies at the intersection of media power, elite theory, and critical political economy of the media.

Ryan Harnell

Ryan Harnell joined Goldsmiths as a Doctoral Researcher in October 2024 and has an MSc in Communication for Development from the University of Reading. His PhD looks at community radio as a space for autonomous social change.

Shao-Wen Lee

Shao-Wen Lee is a film director, screenwriter, and artist born in Taiwan. BA in Fine Arts and MFA in Virtual Reality(VR) and Documentary creation from University College London and Tainan National University of the Arts. He is doing a practical PhD in VR and documentary creation about transgender at Goldsmiths, University of London. He engages in filming video art, films, VR and documentaries. The topics of his films are usually about bodies and social issues. His research interests include documentary, digital media and gender studies.

Professor Catherine Rottenberg

Catherine Rottenberg’s research investigates the convergence of feminism and neoliberalism as well as the politics of care. Before coming to Goldsmiths, she was a faculty member in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham. She began her academic life as a literary scholar but over the past decade has moved decidedly into the realm of media, communications and cultural studies. In all of her work, she has been concerned with trying to understand and theorize forms of governance and domination.

Dr. Gholam Khiabany

Gholam Khiabany’s academic career has focused on the relationship between citizenship, political activism and media and cultural practices, including alternative media. His research interests centre on the media and social change and the relationship between communication, development and democracy with particular reference to the Middle East. Khiabany is also interested in the debate over multiculturalism, culturalisation of terror, the rise of the security state, and anti-Muslim racism.

Dr. Kathryn Claire Higgins

Kathryn Claire Higgins is a Lecturer in Global Digital Politics at Goldsmiths. Her research investigates media culture as a site of vulnerability politics, exploring how competing claims to vulnerability encounter one another in the terrain of mediated representation and struggle for public recognition. Her primary concern is with the cultural justification of violence – especially, forms of violence enacted in the name of safety, security and justice. Her approach coalesces (digital) media and journalism studies, cultural studies, multi-modal critical discourse analysis (CDA), feminist theory, critical security studies, and the sociology of criminalization, securitization, and state violence.

Professor Lina Dencik

Lina Dencik researches the relationship between digital media and social change with a focus on the politics of data and AI. Lina is a Professor in the Department of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies and University Research Leader in AI Justice. She is Co-Founder/Director of the Data Justice Lab and has published widely on digital media and the politics of data, with a particular focus on governance and resistance. Lina has published 8 books and over 30 journal articles and book chapters. She is currently working on a sole-authored monograph on power and justice in an age of datafication.

Dr. Marcela Pizarro Coloma

Marcela Pizarro Coloma has worked as a journalist in international news and filmmaking for over 20 years. She worked at Al Jazeera English across the globe since its launch, most notably on the channel’s media critique show ‘The Listening Post’. Her reports, documentaries and animations focus on the politics, economics and history of media and culture worldwide. Her PhD (University of London, 2004) was on the work of one of Latin America’s most important cultural theorists, Nelly Richard.

Dr. Milly Williamson

Milly Williamson’s research investigates the relationship between the media and citizenship and the mediated means by which individuals and social groups are either marginalised or validated. Her research thus spans key questions of our time – from the growth of racism to the huge rise of promotional content and the growth of celebrity culture in online and offline media. She is interested in the roles that different forms of promotional media play, both in the media itself and in wider society and culture, and she asks critical questions about the impact of the ubiquity and dominance of promotional material on public life.

Professor Mirca Madianou

Mirca Madianou’s research focuses on the social consequences of communication technologies, infrastructures and artificial intelligence (AI) in a global south context especially in relation to migration and humanitarian emergencies. She is currently Principal Investigator on a British Academy grant on digital identity programmes in refugee camps in Thailand. Her latest book, Technocolonialism: when technology for good is harmful, is published in October 2024. Earlier books include: Mediating the Nation: news, audiences and the politics of identity, and Migration and New Media: transnational families and polymedia.

Dr. Rashmee Roshan Lall

Rashmee Roshan Lall is an international journalist, academic, commentator and creative writer. As a journalist she has worked for a wide variety of outlets on four continents. Her experience includes presenting for the BBC World Service in London, editing The Sunday Times of India in Delhi, reporting from Haiti for The Guardian and The Economist and analysing political developments from the US and Tunisia for the UAE’s The National. Her doctorate, in Critical Research and Creative Writing, investigates the impact of Plato’s views on mimesis on early Arab philosophers.

Professor Rosalind Gill

Rosalind Gill is a professor based in ICCE and MCCS who leads Goldsmiths’ research in the area of inequalities in media, culture and creative industries. All of her research is animated by questions about power, social justice, and the relationship between culture and subjectivity. She is author or co-editor of several books including Theorizing Cultural Work (with Mark Banks and Stephanie Taylor); Aesthetic Labour: Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism (with Ana-Sofia Elias and Christina Scharff); and Confidence Culture (with Shani Orgad). Her most recent book is Perfect: Feeling Judged on Social Media (Polity, 2023).

Dr. Ruth Garland

Ruth Garland’s research project is a longitudinal study of UK government communications from 1979 to date. She spent more than 25 years in public sector PR, taking her PhD at the LSE in 2016. Her research focuses on governments' relations with media taking the UK since 1979 as a case study. She is critical of the narrative of political spin, preferring to examine the broader relations between politics and media as an interaction between and within elites that excludes the public. She is concerned to identify the role of impartiality as a factor in trustworthy and credible public communication.