Zhengrong Hu

Communication University of China

Hu Zhengrong is Professor of Communication at Communication University of China (CUC), Vice President of CUC, Director of National Center for Radio and Television Studies and Deputy Chair of Chinese Association of Communication. His research covers media policy and institutional transition, media development strategy, media management and political economy of communication. His publications include a series of books on Chinese media history and regulations; some of them have been textbooks for university students. He published a number of influential papers on Chinese media in transition on the leading Chinese journals.  

He was a research fellow at Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (2005) and the Leverhulme visiting professor at University of Westminster (2006).

Dan Schiller

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Professor Schiller is a communication historian whose interests center on telecommunications history, and on the role of cultural production in the socio-economic development of the market system. His books are How to Think About Information (University of Illinois Press, 2007); Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System (MIT, April, 1999); Theorizing Communication: A Historical Reckoning (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Telematics and Government (Norwood: Ablex, 1982);and Objectivity and the News: The Public and the Rise of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia: Univ of Penn. Press, 1981). He got Ph.D. in Communication, University of Pennsylvania (1978). His research interests: Governance, Politics / Political Communication, Globalization, Internet, Discipline(s), Communications. 

Yuezhi Zhao

Simon Fraser University, Canada

Chang Jiang Chair Professor,Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Global Communication; Director, Global Media Monitoring and Analysis Lab at Simon Fraser University

Jan Nederveen Pieterse

University of California at Santa, USA

Jan Nederveen Pieterse is Mellichamp Professor of Global Studies and Sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in globalization, development studies and cultural anthropology. He was previously at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and the University of Amsterdam. He is Honorary Professor of Globalization at Maastricht University. He co-organizes annual Global studies conferences. He currently focuses on new trends in twenty-first century globalization, implications of economic crisis and growing South-South cooperation. He has been visiting professor in Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden and Thailand. He is on the editorial board of Clarity Press, the Journal of Global Studies and e-global, and is associate editor of the European Journal of Social Theory, Ethnicities, Third Text and the Journal of Social Affairs. He edits book series on Emerging Societies (Routledge) and Frontiers of Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan). For recent books and articles see under Publications.

Fernando Oliveira Paulino

University of Brasilia, Brazil

Fernando Oliveira Paulino has a PhD in Communications from the University of Brasilia (UnB) with an internship at Universidad de Sevilla, Spain. He is a professor at UnB, coordinating Communitarian Communication Program (www.fac.unb.br/comcom). He also is researcher at the Laboratory of Communication Policies (LaPCom) at UnB, and Director of ALAIC (the Latin American Association of Communications Researchers); paulino@unb.br

Vibodh Parthasarathi

Jamia Milia Central University, India

Over the last 15 years, Vibodh Parthasarathi has maintained a multidisciplinary interest in media theory, communication & development policy, and comparative media practice. Trained in Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies (The Hague), Mass Communication, Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi) and an undergraduate degree in History from St. Stephens College, Delhi University. Parthasarathi’s research explores the trans-national history of the music industry, Indian communication industry under globalisation, comparative media policy, and environmental movements & communication practices. His association with the media industry in India and abroad has varied from being a consultant, television producer and documentary director; his last film Crosscurrents: A Fijian Travelogue (2001) explored the experiences of reconciliation in Fiji after the decade of military coups. Parathasarathi currently serves on the Board of the Centre for Internet & Society (Bangalore), and on the International Advisory Board of the India Media Centre, University of Westminster (London).

Colin Sparks

Hong Kong Baptist University

In the course of Prof. Colin Sparks's research, he has worked with and advised the European Union, Unesco, the Open Society Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the British Council, Universities in the US, Europe and East Asia, and many other organisations, academic, official, and non-governmental. He has participated actively in the professional associations of the field, both nationally and internationally. He was one of the founders of Media, Culture and Society, and he continue to play an active role as managing editor, as well as editing issues on a regular basis. He was a founder of the European Institute for Communication and Culture. He have organised several of its colloquia, and edited themed issues of its journal Javnost/The Public. In 2004, he took the initiative to launch an open access journal Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, on whose editorial board he serve. His current research interests include the comparative study of media systems undergoing rapid change. He is particularly interested in comparing the media systems of post-communist countries with those of other societies that have moved away from different forms of dictatorship towards more democratic forms of political rule. His other major current interest is in theories of media and communication.

Des Freedman

Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Des Freedman is interested in the relationship between media and power together with the political and economic contexts of media policymaking and regulation. He is an editor of the Sage journal 'Global Media and Communication' and was previously on the management committee of the COST programme A20, 'The Impact of the Internet on the Mass Media in Europe'. He was awarded an ESRC grant in 2005 to examine the dynamics of media policy-making in the UK and US. See coverage in the Guardian and a copy of the report. Des received an AHRC research leave award in 2006 to complete The Politics of Media Policy for Polity Press. He was a participant in the 'Spaces of the News' project in the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre, co-editor of the 'Unversities and Capitalism' section of open Democracy and is a member of the National Council of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.

Pradip Thomas

The University of Queensland, Australia

Associate Professor Pradip Thomas is a leading academic in the area of communication and social change, communication rights and the political economy of communications in India.As an activist scholar who worked formerly with the international media NGO, WACC, Pradip has travelled widely throughout the world and has been involved in the planning and evaluation of community media projects including community radio in Haiti. He played an important role in the Communication Rights in the Information Society campaign linked to the World Summit on the Information Society and has been a frequent key note speaker at international media conferences, most recently at the IAMCR Conference held in Braga in July 2010. He is Chair of the Participatory Communications Section, IAMCR, on the editorial committee of a number of journals including Media Development, Journal of Creative Communications, Communication for Development and Social Change, Journalism and Communication Monographs and the International Journal of Press/Politics and is also on the advisory board of a number of international institutes including the India Media Centre at the University of Westminster. In 2010 he was involved in a study of communication rights movements in India. His research interests: Political economy of communications, Media and Religionm Communication and Social Change, Indian Media.

Kaarle Nordenstreng

 Professor Emeritus,  School of Communication, Media and Theatre, University of Tampere, Finland

http://www.uta.fi/cmt/en/contact/staff/kaarlenordenstreng/index.html

Hopeton Dunn

University of the West Indies, Jamaica

Professor Hopeton S. Dunn is a communications scholar, researcher and policy analyst. He is director of the Telecommunications Policy and Management Programme (TPM) at the Mona School of Business, University of the West Indies. Currently, Professor Dunn is Chairman of the Broadcasting Commission Of Jamaica which has Regulatory responsibility for the electronic media, broadcast radio and television, as well as subscriber television. He is also the Secretary General of the International Association for Media and Communication research (IAMCR), which is the largest global association of research scholars in media, communication and development. BCJ Chairman, Hopeton Dunn is Professor of Communications Policy and Digital Media in the Faculty of Social Sciences, UWI, Mona. He is a communications scholar, lecturer, researcher and policy analyst. Professor Dunn is the Director of the Telecommunications Policy and Management (TPM) Programme at the Mona School of Business, UWI. He is also the Secretary General of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), which is the largest global association of research scholars in media, communication and development. His research interests: Broadcasting, Digital and Electronic Communication, Technology Management and Public Policy-making, Online Learning and Distance Education, Graduate Education and Research Supervision, Research Methodology for Communication and New Media, Educational Administration.