Dr Suzanne Temwa Gondwe Harris is LSE Fellow in Media, Communication and Development in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE.
Dr Harris holds a PhD in Media and Communications from Hong Kong Baptist University where she examined the influence of foreign intervention in Malawi's changing media landscape. Prior to this, Dr Harris spent over 10 years working in media and human rights across Central and Southeast Asia, Africa and South America, focusing specifically on training young journalists, activists, and bloggers on freedom of expression, sexual health campaigning, ethical image-making and reporting, and countering hate speech.
In 2010, she founded Changing the Face of Africa which focused on critical media literacy to challenge negative images and narratives of Africa and African's in "Western" media. Working with schools, community groups and media outlets in the UK, Malawi and Zambia she created curriculum and workshops that provoked public debate and generated solutions. Throughout her career, she has used this pedagogy to teach media, communications, journalism, human rights and political-economy at colleges and universities in Eswatini, Hong Kong, England, and Argentina, as well as consulting with various media, international development and human rights organisations covering discrimination, coloniality, media freedoms, international development, and ethics.
Dr Harris' current research interests are focused on identifying and repositioning media and cultural studies outside the Western European/Northern American axis, specifically through the epistemicide of African literature, knowledge and philosophy which she uses to reinvigorate students curiosity and interests in learning about media and international development through alternative global narratives, theories, practices and histories. Her recently published research focuses on the concept of 'developmentality' to understand how development has been used as an ideological instrument to promote the insidious rise of the liberal media system in Malawi - and her other body of work examined the historical and contemporary significance of public policies on ethnic minority media in Argentina which have led to the habitual denial and invisibility of Afro-descendants and their media.