Alessandro D’Arma is Reader in Media and Communication and Director of the CAMRI PhD Programme. He holds a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

He is the elected Co-President of the International Association of Public Media Researchers (IAPMR – 2021-2024). Previously (2016-2021) he served as Co-Chair of the Public Service Media Policies Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

Before pursuing an academic career, Alessandro had worked as a media industry analyst and contributed to numerous consultancy reports.

Research interests and publications

Alessandro’s research interests revolve around communications policy and the political economy of media industries, with a particular focus on issues around public service media, the politics of media policy, and the digital transformation of the media industries.

Alessandro is the author of Media and Politics in Contemporary Italy (Lexington 2015), numerous invited chapters in edited collections and research papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Media, Culture and Society, Journal of Information Policy, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Journal of Media Business Studies, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies and Journal of Children and the Media

Grants

Between 2019 and 2021, Alessandro was Principal Investigator for an AHRC-funded Research Network on ‘Innovation in Public Service Media (PSM) Policies’ (2019-2020) with Minna Horowitz (U. of Helsinki), a project promoting collaborations between academics and the wider PSM community of stakeholders represented in the network’s Steering Committee which included the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), the BBC, the European Broadcasting Union, OfCom, Public Media Alliance, and the Finnish public service broadcaster YLE.

Other academic services

Alessandro is a member of the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review College and the European Science Foundation (ESF) College of Expert Reviewers. He is also the Subject Group Representative for technē AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.

He has served as External Examiner at Royal Holloway University (2017-2021), Montfort University (2016-2020) and Brunel University (2013-2016).

Ph.D. supervision

Alessandro has considerable experience in doctoral supervision. Ph.D. subjects supervised to completion include media entrepreneurship and leadership, online hate speech, and smartphone use among young people.

Alessandro welcomes inquiries from prospective PhD students about supervising research projects in his fields of interest, including but not limited to communication policy, media and politics, and media industry studies.