Marcela Pizarro Coloma

Marcela works on the geopolitics, economics and history of news media around the world.

Staff details

Marcela Pizarro Coloma has worked as a journalist in international news and filmmaking for over 20 years. She began at the Associated Press and then went on to work at Al Jazeera English, most notably at The Listening Post, the channel’s media critique show. She has focused on the political economy, geopolitics and culture of the news media around the world. Her long form reports, documentaries and animations look at issues of race, gender and class and much of her work has been dedicated to histories of journalism in the Global South.
Marcela has produced shows on the Middle East since the 2011 Arab Uprisings, Latin America’s media revolutions past and present, the rise of far right populist discourse across the world and the legacies of colonialism in legacy media.
Marcela completed her AHRC funded PhD in 2004 at the University of London. Her thesis focused on the work of one of Latin America’s most important cultural theorists, Nelly Richard.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD 2004

Teaching and supervision

Marcela supervises research on the geopolitics of international news, the cultural history of media in the Global South, the politics of representation in legacy media as well as scholarship on histories of independent news production around the world.

Research interests

Marcela's main areas of research and practice focus on journalism and theory in the Global South.

She recently wrote and produced Race Historicised: Epistemologies of Colour - a series of short films using animation, showcasing key thinkers in the Black radical tradition for Al Jazeera English.

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/digidocs/2024/12/19/w-e-b-du-bois-the-power-of-double-consciousness

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/digidocs/2024/11/21/race-historicised-fanon-colonial-psychosis-digidocs