Alessandro D’Arma and Maria Michalis receive RIPE Award for Excellence
Dr Alessandro D’Arma and Professor Maria Michalis have each received the RIPE Award for Excellence in Public Service Media Research and Practice, “with appreciation for significant contributions in scholarship and leadership.” The awards were presented at RIPE@2026 in Taipei in October 2026, recognising their longstanding contribution to public service media research and their leadership in the field.
The 13th biennial RIPE conference took “Politics and Public Service Media” as its theme, with National Chengchi University and the Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation as hosts and sponsors. Its programme brought together researchers, educators, practitioners and policymakers to examine issues including media independence, public trust, digital transformation and the influence of online platforms.
Alessandro and Maria were elected co-Presidents of the International Association of Public Media Researchers (IAPMR) in 2021, an association connecting academics and industry professionals working on public service media research and innovation. Their joint publications include the 2025 open-access collection “Challenges and Developments in Public Service Journalism”, co-edited with Gregory Ferrell Lowe and Michael-Bernhard Zita and published by the University of Westminster Press. The book examines how journalism can serve the public interest amid pressures from digital platforms, artificial intelligence and changing political and economic conditions, drawing on cases from Europe, Southern Africa and India.
Alessandro, Reader in Media and Communication, researches the relationships between media, politics and communication policy, with a particular focus on public service media and changes in media industries. Between 2019 and 2021, he led an AHRC-funded research network on “Innovation in Public Service Media Policies”, facilitating collaboration between academics and public media stakeholders.
Maria is Professor of Communication Policy and Deputy Director of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), with research spanning public service media, digital governance and digital sustainability. Her recent work includes contributing to a Council of Europe initiative addressing systemic threats to public service media, helping to develop its methodology and research concerns about independence, governance and funding.
