Isabel Awad PhD
Associate Professor
Biographical Note
Isabel Awad is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She specializes on how the news contributes to the inclusion/exclusion of cultural minorities, on journalistic practices, and how journalism operates within neoliberal contexts. The underlying concern of her research is an understanding of the conditions for democratic communication and social justice against a backdrop of social inequality.
Isabel has recently completed a research project funded by a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The project is entitled “Journalism and the tensions of neoliberal democracy” focused on the case of Chile. It examined how journalists and other actors involved in news production operate within a political system characterized by marketing, depoliticization, and inequality.
Isabel obtained her PhD in Communication from Stanford University (USA) in 2007. Her dissertation, “Journalism, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Representation: The Case of the Latina/o Community in San José, California,” compared the role of ethnic and mainstream media for the (dis)empowerment of minority communities. Since she moved to the Netherlands, in 2007, Isabel has also conducted research on the relationship between ethnic minorities, the media, and democratic participation in this country.
A native from Chile, Isabel studied journalism and aesthetics in Universidad Católica de Chile. Before moving to the U.S. and to Europe, she worked as a journalism lecturer in Universidad Católica and as a political reporter in a national Chilean newspaper.
Between 2007 and 2009, Isabel worked at the Department of Communication at the University of Amsterdam as a lecturer and international academic coordinator.