Professor Shani Orgad

Professor Orgad is currently co-leading a three-year research project about the visibility of menopause in the UK. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the project examines how and why in recent years menopause has become a ‘hot topic’ and what consequences the topic’s increased visibility has had. Professor Orgad has published several articles and blogs from this project and is currently co-editing a monograph entitled ‘Re-imagining Menopause’ (to be published in 2026, The Sociological Review monograph series).

Professor Orgad latest book is entitled ‘The Confidence Culture’ (with Professor Rosalind Gill), (Duke University Press, 2022). The book examines the extraordinary rise of female self-esteem in current culture in and across media, forms, and discourses. ‘Confidence Culture’ has been widely covered by international outlets including New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, El Pais, Die Zeit, Vox and Financial Times and an essay based on the book was published in The Atlantic.

Professor Orgad's other research examines public discourses about gender equality in the workplace and media representations of women and work. In 2019, Professor Orgad completed a study that examines the experiences of women who left paid employment in the context of becoming mothers, and juxtaposes their experiences against the way they are represented in the media and public discourse. The study, which involved interviews with women who left paid employment and their partners, and analysis of media and policy representations gender, work and family, is published in the book ‘Heading Home: Motherhood, Work and the Failed Promise of Equality’ (2019, Columbia University Press). Read reviews of the book in the Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement, and LSE Review of Books.

Professor Orgad's other research interest concerns the significance of media representations for people's understanding of themselves, of one another, and the world. She is particularly interested in how new media enable people to present and understand themselves and how their personal narratives and representations interact, reflect and challenge larger public narratives and images. These issues are explored in her book Media Representation and the Global Imagination (2012, Polity). The book examines how transformations in the contemporary media landscape, specifically the expansion of new media, the increasing global scope of communication, and the blurring between public and private realms, change and shape the ways in which issues of public concern are framed, imaged, and constructed, and what consequences this may have.

Professor Orgad's other interests include representations of suffering, new media, the Internet and computer-mediated communication, narrative and media, media and everyday life, media and globalisation, and ethnographic research methods.

Professor Orgad completed (with Professor Bruna Seu, Birkbeck College) the research project 'Mediated Humanitarian Knowledge: Audiences' Reactions and Moral Actions', funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The project explored public understanding and reactions to humanitarian communications, including campaigns about international development issues and humanitarian appeals. Professor Orgad and Professor Seu conducted focus groups across the UK to learn how people make sense of the images and narratives of distant suffering and how ideologies, emotions and biographical experiences shape those responses. They also interviewed professionals from ten UK-based international NGOs to explore how they think about and produce their communications. The study’s findings are published in Caring in Crisis? Humanitarianism, the Public and NGOs (2017, Palgrave).

Professor Orgad's previous research focused on the online participation of breast cancer patients in Internet spaces. While much has been debated about the significance of the Internet, the actual processes of communication in which people engage online are as yet little understood. Exploring the ways in which participants in online spaces configure their experience into a story, her study offered an innovative way of understanding online communication as a socially significant activity. It is based on e-mail and face-to-face interviews with breast cancer patients, as well as an analysis of breast cancer related websites. The substantive focus of storytelling online is analysed in its specificity as a social phenomenon. At the same time it is connected to a broad range of debates on communication and Internet, health and illness and social agency. Professor Orgad has written about this in her book Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet (2005, Peter Lang).

Another interest of Professor Orgad's is ethnographic research methods and qualitative methods of Internet research. She wrote about this in chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (edited by Mansell et al, 2007) Virtual Methods (edited by Hine, Berg, 2005) and Internet Inquiry: A Dialogue Among Qualitative Researchers (edited by Markham & Baym, Sage, 2008), and in a review of the book "Online Social Research" in New Media & Society (February 2005).

Postgraduate teaching

Professor Orgad teaches the popular postgraduate course Representation in the Age of Globalisation (MC416) and co-teaches on the core course Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications (MC408).

Professor Orgad has won numerous awards for her teaching, including won numerous teaching awards including 2019 LSE Teaching Excellence Prize, 2018 LSE Excellence in Education Award as well as the LSE Innovator Award.

Doctoral supervision

Professor Orgad supervises doctoral researchers and welcomes applications from prospective students relating to her areas of research. Her current doctoral supervisees include Diana Olaleye, Jialu Sun, Mengyun He and Sarah Learmonth.

To date, she has supervised to successful completion 12 PhD students.

Public Talks

• ‘In search for ambivalence in contemporary media culture’. Jay Blumer Annual lecture, University of Leeds.
• ‘Representation and media: How women are portrayed and why it matters’ (panel). Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, 25 February 2025.
• ‘Women who quit: Media and policy discourse about gender and work’. Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Policy: Innovation in Gender Research, LSE School of Public Policy, 18 September 2024.
• ‘Confidence culture and women’s careers’ (with Rosalind Gill). Keynote. Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity, Queen Mary University, London, 14 May 2024.
• ‘Ambivalence: The waste of modern media culture’. Keynote. Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication, 11 January 2024.
• ‘Disavowal and discipline: Fantasies and tensions in contemporary menopause advertising’ (with Kate Gilchrist). Menopause: New Perspectives, New Beginnings, University of Sussex, 19 June 2024.
• ‘Menopause in the UK news: Neoliberal logics and feminist framings’. New Perspectives on the Menopause, King’s College London, 15 June 2024.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Keynote. New York University, 11 September 2023.
• ‘The menopause moment: Media, neoliberalism, and big pharma’. The Stories We Tell: Gender and Getting Older in the Media. Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 9 September 2023.
• ‘How to tame your hormones: Menopause rage in contemporary cultural discourses’. The Mediatization of Women’s Rage. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, 30 June 2023.
• ‘Posting vulnerability on LinkedIn’. Media Futures conference, LSE, 15 June 2023.
• ‘Confidence culture: Changing women, not the world’ (with Rosalind Gill). UK Insurance Women’s Inclusivity Network, 8 June 2023.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Bocconi University, Milan. Broadening Your Frame: EDI lecture series, 4 May 2023.
• ‘Confidence at work: Media representations of women in the workplace’. Keynote. 23rd EdukCircle International Convention on Media Communication, 25 March 2023.
• 'The changing face of the female workforce' (online webinar). Adecco group, 8 March 2023.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Keynote (with Rosalind Gill). Bayes Business School, London, 1 March 2023.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Knowledge exchange session for King’s Fund, 17 January 2023.
• ‘Media representations of migration: A crisis of imagination’. MEDIENDIENST: Communicating Migration Challenges 2022 & Beyond’ conference, Berlin, 16 November 2022.
• ‘Heading home: Fantasies and injuries of motherhood and work’. Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL, 4 October 2022.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Keynote. LSE Power annual conference, London, 28 June 2022.
• ‘Global imagination and the media’. Keynote. People in Need journalist training programme, Slovakia, 27 June 2022.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Keynote (with Rosalind Gill). WE:ARE, Women's Empowerment and Recovery Educators, 16 June 2022.
• ‘Crisis-ready responsible selves: National productions of the pandemic’ (with Radha Hegde). International Communication Association conference (ICA), Paris, 27 May 2022.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Keynote (with Rosalind Gill). Women in Games annual conference, 19 May 2022.
• ‘Confidence culture’. Keynote (with Rosalind Gill). Education and Standards Directorate, UK General Medical Council, 17 May 2022
• ‘Confidence culture’. International Women’s Day 2022 Financial Times panel, 8 March 2022.
• ‘Heading home: Fantasies and injuries of motherhood and work’. Keynote. CISC seminar, University of Essex. 9 March 2022.
• ‘The Others are coming’: Media representations of migration. Centre for Citizenship Education, Warsaw, Poland. 23 February 2022.
• Heading Home: Fantasies and Injuries of Motherhood and Work. CISC, University of Essex. 9 March 2022.
• Confidence Culture (with Rosalind Gill). Keynote to Education and Standards Directorate, General Medical Council. 17 May 2022.
• Confidence Culture (with Rosalind Gill). Keynote at the Women in Games annual conference. 19 May 2022.
• Global imagination and the media. Keynote to People in Need journalist training programme, Slovakia. 27 June 2022.

Selected recent media interviews and book coverage

• ‘It is the workplace, not women’s confidence, that needs to be fixed’. Financial times. 16 January 2022.
• ‘Is confidence a cult? These sociologists think so.’ Vox. 18 January 2022. ‘Is Confidence the Secret to Success? Not Exactly.’ New York Times. 7 February 2022.
• ‘The confidence con — have you fallen for the self-esteem myth?’. The Times. 3 March 2022.
• "Confidence culture": comment le culte de la confiance en soi peut piéger les femmes. L’Express. 19 March 2022.
• ‘Unpacking the myth of self-esteem: ‘Our relationship with brands is toxic. They tell you to love yourself, but they sell you something unreachable.’ El Pais. 24 April 2022.
• "Es geht immer nur darum, dass Frauen sich ändern sollen". Zeit Online. 18 April 2022.
• ‘The cult of confidence: could positive thinking be making us feel less secure?’. The Guardian. 10 July 2022.

Selected recent blogs and op-eds

• Orgad, S., Paull, G., and Rottenberg, C. (2025). The problem of addressing menopause in the workplace without rigorous evidence. LSE Business Review.
• Orgad, S. (2024). Why is vulnerability trending on LinkedIn? LSE Impact of Social Sciences.
• Orgad, S., Srivastava, D., and Olaleye, D. (2024). Community as an antidote to "Broken Britain".
• Orgad, S. and Gill, R. (2022). ‘How confidence became a cult’. The Atlantic.
• Orgad, S. and Gill, R. (2022). ‘Against systemic gender injustice, our confidence culture encourages women to blame themselves’. LSE Business Review.
• Gill, R. and Orgad, S. (2022) ‘Confidence culture tells women to be more self-assured – but ignores the real problems’. The Conversation.

Recent podcasts

• WAMC Podcasts: ‘#1708: Shani Orgad, Rosalind Gill on "Confidence Culture" | 51%’. 7 April 2022.
• Top Rank: ‘The Confidence Cult’. 6 April 2022.
• LSE IQ Podcast: ‘Can mothers do it all? 8 February 2022.
• New Book Network: ‘Confidence Culture’. 21 January 2022. Scoot Over: ‘Body Positivity; Commercialized or Commandeered?’. 20 September 2021.
• Scoot Over: ‘Body Positivity; Commercialized or Commandeered?’. 20 September 2021.