Research team

Sabina Mihelj is Professor of in the School of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, United Kingdom. Her current work focuses on news audiences, polarization and illiberalism, digital nationalism, and media and trust. She has written extensively on the relationship between media and nationalism, on comparative media research, and on the role of media and culture in the Cold War. Her publications include From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television (Cambridge University Press, 2018/2021), Media Nations: Communicating Belonging and Exclusion in the Modern world (Palgrave, 2011) and Central and Eastern European Media in Comparative Perspective (Ashgate, 2012). Sabina’s research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Norwegian Research Council, and the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. Her most recent externally funded research project include “The Illiberal Turn: News Consumption, Polarization and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe” (ESRC, 2019–2022, with Václav Štětka) and “Screening Socialism: (Leverhulme Trust, 2013-2016). She currently acts as Director of Research and Impact for Communication and Media at Loughborough, is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College and sits on the editorial boards of several international media and cultural analysis journals. She is the Lead Principal Investigator of the PANCOPOP project, and is also responsible for coordinating impact work with project partners.

Dr Václav Štětka is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, where he has been working since 2016. Previously he has held research and academic posts at Masaryk University in Brno, Charles University in Prague, and the University of Oxford. His current research interests encompass political communication in the digital environment, the impact of mis/disinformation, or the relationship between media and democracy. He has been Principal Investigator of the ESCR-funded project “The Illiberal Turn: News Consumption, Polarization and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe” (2019–2022, with Sabina Mihelj as Co-I). He is member of several international research projects and networks, including Digital News Report (University of Oxford), Media Pluralism Monitor (European University Institute) or NEPOCS (Network of European Political Communication Scholars). His latest book is titled “Social Media and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe” (Routledge 2018, with Pawel Surowiec). In the PANCOPOP project,  Štětka will lead Strand 4: Public Attitudes.

Danilo Rothberg is Professor of Sociology of Communication at Unesp (São Paulo State University), Brazil. His subjects of interest include journalism theory and ethics, public communications, media policy, health communication and popularisation of science. He was a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London, University of Warwick and The Open University (UK) and Université de Lorraine (France). His publications cover subjects such as communication and water governance, media education, public journalism, right to information and proactive transparency, media framing, digital democracy, social media and democracy. Full references can be found here. Current projects include “Communication and democracy: media accountability, public service media, internet access and the right to information in Germany and Brazil”, funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (CAPES/MEC, Brazil) and DAAD (Germany). Previous projects include “Communication and memory in water governance and adaptation to climate change” and “Narratives of water (NoW): a cross-cultural exploration of digital hydro-citizenship in the UK and Brazil”, both funded by Fapesp (São Paulo Research Foundation). In the PANCOPOP project, Rothberg will lead Strand 3: Media coverage.

Marlene Laruelle, Ph.D., is Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University.  At IERES she is also Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program, a Co-Director of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia), and the founder and Director of the Central Asia Program. She has published widely on Russia’s ideologies and nationalism, on Russia’s foreign policy and soft power strategies, and has published 10 monographs, the last one being Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Cornell University Press). She is currently working on Russia’s and China’s promotion of illiberal governance. In the PANCOPOP project,  Laruelle will lead Strand 5: Pandemic Geopolitics.

Daniel C. Hallin is Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of California, San Diego.  His research covers media and politics, media and war, media and public health, the history of journalistic professionalism, and comparative media systems, particularly in Europe and Latin America.  His books include The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam, We Keep America on Top of the World: Television News and the Public Sphere, Comparing Media Systems:  Three Models of Media and Politics Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World and most recently, Making Health Public: How News Coverage is Remaking Media, Medicine and Contemporary Life.   Comparing Media Systems has received numerous awards and been translated into 10 languages.  Prof. Hallin received his Ph.D. in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1980 and joined UCSD’s Communication Department that year. He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association; other awards include the Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Award of the Political Communication Division of the American Political Science Association, the C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy and fellowships at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.   In the PANCOPOP project, he is coordinating Strand 1, on Health Crisis Communication.

Beata Klimkiewicz is Jagiellonian University Professor in the area of media and social communication studies, based at the Institute of Journalism, Media and Social Communication. She holds Jean Monnet Chair for 2019 – 2024 (Media Freedom, Trust and Transparency in the European Union) and chairs the Department of Political Communication and the Media. Her research interests include media pluralism and diversity; media policy and regulation in Europe; media systems in Central Europe. Since 2012, Beata Klimkiewicz has been involved in co-operation with the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom at European University Institute in Florence as a member of Scientific Committee and national expert in Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM). B. Klimkiewicz has also provided expertise for the UNESCO’s report on World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development. She is an author of books “A Polyvalent Media Policy in the Enlarged European Union” published by the Jagiellonian University Press and “Media Freedom and Pluralism: Media Policy Challenges in the Enlarged Europe” published by the CEU Press”. Recently, she published articles on media ownership transparency in Europe and structural polarization of the public sphere in Poland. In the PANCOPOP project, he is coordinating Strand 2, on Media Policy.

Ana Stojiljkovic holds a PhD in Media and Communication awarded at the University of Leeds in 2017. Her research interests revolve around strategic communication, election campaigns, democratisation contexts, and audience/reception research. Her thesis ‘Collective Identities and Election Campaigns’ was supervised by Professor Katrin Voltmer and Dr Giorgia Aiello. The thesis looks at how election campaigns communicate the meaning of collective identities, especially how national narratives are communicated in election campaigns. Ana had previously collaborated with the ‘Media, Conflict and Democratisation’ Project at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, was a Research Assistant managing data collection and analysis in Serbia for the ‘Illiberal turn’ Project at Loughborough University, and consulted election campaigns and political projects in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, and the UK. In the PANCOPOP project, she is conducting qualitative research in Serbia.

Katarzyna holds a PhD in the field of political science from Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University. In her doctoral dissertation, Katarzyna explored the role of symbolic communication in the regional conflict over the name of the country between Republic of North Macedonia and Greece. Katarzyna is passionate about Balkan issues – she has written articles related to the Macedonian media market – including on parallel media spaces of national minorities, the role of globalisation in the creation of minority identities, media and hate speech in a multicultural society, and the role of new media. For the past two years, Katarzyna has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Film and TV Production at Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University. Katarzyna is a creator of original TV programmes: Production management in TV formats and the Documentalist Workshop. She is also a journalist, TV director, screenwriter, and children books writer. Katarzyna is responsible for conducting research in Poland and is working with Professor Klimkiewicz on the Media Policy strand.

Paulo Ferracioli holds a PhD in Political Science from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, where he was a researcher at the Research Group on Media, Politics, and Technology (PONTE/UFPR). He holds a master’s degree in Communication from the same institution. He is also a lawyer and a journalist. His main research interests are in the area of Political Communication, focusing on Political Journalism, Transparency and Internet, with recent publications concerning those themes in journals such as Digital Journalism. He has previously worked as a Researcher at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, investigating the political coverage of Brazilian mainstream media. Paulo is responsible for conducting research in Brazil and is working with Professor Rothberg on the Media Coverage strand.

Nithyanand Rao is a PhD student in the Department of Communication and the Science Studies Program at UC San Diego. He is working with Prof. Dan Hallin on Strand 1, Health Crisis Communication.

Francisco Brandão received his PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). His research interests are Political Communication, Comparative Politics and Elections. He worked as a visiting scholar at the Political Science Department at the University of Brasília (UnB) and as a journalist and data scientist at the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil. Francisco Brandão is working with Dr Václav Štětka on Strand 4, examining the patterns of public attitudes and information-seeking behaviour in relation to health matters. 

Maria Kiryukhina is a graduate of Lomonosov Moscow State University and is currently a Senior Researcher within the Bridge Research Network initiative (in cooperation with George Washington University). Her scientific interest lies in the study of Russian propaganda from a sociological perspective. Maria will be working with Professor Marlene Laruelle on Strand 5, Pandemic Geopolitics.

Brigita completed her Postgraduate degree in International Relations from Goldsmiths University, London. She is undertaking her doctorate study at Loughborough University provisionally titled Television and National Remembering in a Time of Crisis: A Multiscalar Approach. The thesis is being supervised by Prof Emily Keightley and Dr Alena Pfoser. Prior to starting her doctoral study, Brigita has worked as a Research Assistant at Middlesex University London on a small project funded by the Higher Education Initiative Fund. The funded project explored Digital Media Access, Use and Skills Among South Asians in England. Brigita presented key findings from the project at the 2021 British Sociological Association Conference. She is now working as a Project Administrator for the PANCOPOP project.