Professor Myria Georgiou
About
Myria Georgiou is Professor of Media and Communications and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE.
Professor Georgiou has been researching media and communications’ role in constructing meanings of identity and citizenship from a critical humanist perspective. Her current research has three distinct but interconnected strands. The first strand examines the synergetic relation between media and the city and the ways in which their close interconnection organises and regulates urban life and politics. The second strand examines media’s role in identity construction, especially among diasporic, migrant and marginalised communities. The third strand explores how media and communications manifest and regulate symbolic and territorial borders, with consequences for access to rights to citizenship and belonging.
Professor Georgiou is the author and editor of six books and more than sixty peer reviewed publications. Her work has been published in English, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, and Greek. She has also worked as a consultant for a number of regional and international organisations, most importantly the Council of Europe in three different projects. She has written for and been interviewed by a number of national and international media, while, before becoming a full time academic, she worked as a journalist for BBC World Service, Greek press, and the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation.
Expertise
Critical Humanism; Migration and the Media; City and Urban Communication; Identity and Diaspora; Transnational Communities and Networks.
Research
For more than 20 years, Professor Georgiou has been researching media and communications’ role in constructing meanings of identity and citizenship. Her current research has three distinct but interconnected strands. The first strand examines the synergetic relation between media and the city and the ways in which their close interconnection organises and regulates urban publics and communities. The second strand examines media’s role in identity construction, especially among diasporic populations and migrants. The third strand explores the ways in which diversity is represented in the media and the consequences that these representations have for the European ethical and political space.
These strands are explored in a series of recent and current research projects. Among those, her most recent monograph, Being Human in Digital Cities (Polity, 2023), explores the manifestations and contestations of the digital order in cities, through competing claims to urban humanity by different actors – from the Big Tech to dwellers of cities. Before that, her co-authored book, The Digital Border (with L. Chouliaraki, NYU Press, 2022), brought together research conducted over five years across Europe; this project explores the technological and symbolic construction of borders and politics of racial assortment of humanities, separating those who have the right to dignity and rights from those who don’t. Georgiou’s commitment to investigating the ethics and politics of migration is also expressed in a series of projects (e.g. with young urban refugees in Europe; and with Ukrainian refugees at the Polish/Ukrainian border) that bring to the foreground of her research the voices and experiences of migrants.
Current and recent research projects
- (2020-23) - Youth Skills. EU Horizon (LSE team)
- (2017-19)Resilient Communities, Resilient Cties? Digital Makings of the City of Refuge. Rockefellar Foundation. (Principal Investigator)
- (2017-18)Communicating the Digital City. Leverhulme Trust International Academic Fellowship. (Principal Investigator)
- (2016-18) Social Media and Identity from the Perspective of Diasporic LGBTQs. European Commission Horizon 2020 Marie-Curie European Fellowship Research Fellow: Lukasz Szulc (Principal Investigator)
- (2016-19) Alevi Television and the Making of Transnational Alevi Identity. The Royal Society Newton International Fellowship (UK Academic; PI: Cetin Berfin)
- (2013-2015) Marie Curie Inter-European Fellowship: (UPLOAD) Upload. Urban Politics of London Youngsters Analyzed Digitally, Research Fellow: Keun Leurs (Principal Investigator)
- (2013-2014) Community through digital connectivity? Communication infrastructure in multicultural London. LSE Seed Fund. (PI)
- (2008-2011) Media and Citizenship: Transnational Television Cultures Reshaping Political Identities in the European Union; European Commission FP7 (Partner, leading research in the UK, Spain, Cyprus)
- (2007-2008) International Networks Collaboration Mediated Networks: Engendered Diaspora and Global Citizenship (funded by the World Universities Network and the University of Leeds)
- (2007-2009) Representation of Minorities in the European Press - UK Team leader. EU Fundamental Rights Agency
Teaching
Postgraduate teaching
rofessor Georgiou convenes the popular postgraduate course Identity, Transnationalism and the Media and has also contributed lectures to team-taught postgraduate Media and Communications courses relating to theories and concepts (MC408/MC418) and research methodologies (MC4M1/MC4M2).
Doctoral supervision
Professor Georgiou supervises doctoral researchers and welcomes applications from prospective students relating to her areas of research. Her current doctoral supervisees include Afroditi-Maria Koulaxi and Rob Sharp, Nan Ding, Stephanie Guo, Solomon Katachie and Lili Wang.