Academic Profile

Mirca Madianou

Mirca Madianou is a Newton Trust Lecturer in Sociology and a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College where she is also Director of Studies in Politics, Psychology and Sociology (PPS). Before coming to Cambridge she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, UCL (2002-4). In 2002 she was awarded a PhD in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics on the relationship between the media and national and transnational identities in Greece. This research is the basis of her book entitled Mediating the Nation (UCL Press/Routledge, 2005). Her current research examines the role of new communication technologies in the context of migration and transnational families. Her book Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia (with Daniel Miller) is due to be published in 2011. She is the author of several journal articles on nationalism, transnationalism and the media; new media and migration; audiences (particularly the audiences for news media) and the role of emotions in mediated communication. 

Short CV

Education

BA (Athens); MSc and PhD (London School of Economics).

Research Interests

Sociology of media and culture and particularly the social and political impact of mediated communication; new communication technologies and migrant transantionalism; media, nationalism and identities; media audiences and consumption; sociology of news; the emotional dimension of mediated communication; comparative ethnography. 

I welcome applications for doctoral research in any of the above areas.

Current research

I am currently the Principal Investigator on the ESRC grant Migration, ICTs and the transformation of transnational family life (2007-2010). Together with Prof. Danny Miller (UCL) we investigate transnational families and the role of new communications technologies in the context of separation and long distance relationships. This is a three year ethnographic project (2007-2010) which focuses on Filipino and Caribbean people living in London and Cambridge as well as their left-behind families in the Philippines and Trinidad. For forthcoming books and journal articles from this project please see under Publications below. See also under Conference Organisation for information relating to the Digital Diasporas Conference in January 2011.

Recently Completed Projects

Media, Nationalism and Transnational Identities
In my book entitled Mediating the Nation (2005), I explored the impact of television news on the ways people experience the political entity of the nation and their national and transnational identities. Drawing on a two-year ethnography of television viewing in Greece, the book followed the range of public discourses about the nation found in the Greek news and compared them to the everyday discourses and practices about the nation both among Greeks and members of the Turkish minority, a beached diaspora. By following the circulation of discourses it was possible to identify the occasions when the news reinforces symbolic boundaries for inclusion and exclusion from public life. The book also identifies the moments when the public and official discourses about the nation and belonging are contested from below. 

Selected Publications

Books

Madianou, M. (2005) Mediating the Nation: News, audiences and the politics of identity. London: UCL Press/Routledge. Translated into Greek (Athens: Patakis, 2008). 

Madianou, M. and Miller, D. (in press 2011) Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia. London: Routledge.

Couldry, N., Madianou, M. and Pinchevski, A. (eds) (forthcoming) Ethics of Media. London: Palgrave. 

Madianou, M. (ed) (in preparation) Digital Diasporas. 

Articles and book chapters

Madianou, M. (forthcoming July 2012) Migration, ICTs and the accentuated ambivalence of motherhood. The case of Filipino Transnational Families.  Global Networks. 

Madianou, M. (forthcoming) ‘News as a looking glass: shame and the symbolic power of mediation’. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 

Madianou, M. and Miller, D. (2011) ‘Mobile Phone Parenting? Reconfiguring relationships between Filipina migrant mothers and their left-behind children’. New Media and Society,  vol. 13. 

Madianou, M. and Miller, D. (2011) ‘Crafting Love: letters and cassette tapes in transnational Filipino family communication’. South East Asian Research, vol. 19 (2)

Madianou, M. (2011) ‘Beyond the presumption of identity? Ethnicities, Cultures and Transnational Audiences’. In Nightingale, V. (ed.), Handbook of Media Audiences. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 444-459. 

Madianou, M. (2009) ‘Living with News: Ethnography and news consumption’. In Allan, S. (ed.), The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism Studies. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 428-438.

Madianou, M. (2008) ‘Audience reception and news in everyday life’. In Wahl-Jorgensenn, K. and Hanitzsch, T. (eds.) Handbook of Journalism Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 325-357.

Madianou, M. (2007) ‘Banal nationalism and cultural intimacy in responses to television news in Greece’. In Mole, Richard (ed.) Discourse and Identity Politics in Europe. London: Palgrave.  

Madianou, M. (2006) ‘ICTs transnational networks and everyday life’. In Bodo, Simona (ed.), Quando la cultura fa la differenza. Rome: Meltemi. 

Madianou, M. (2005) ‘Contested communicative spaces: identities, boundaries and the role of the media”.  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 31(3): 521-541

Madianou, M. (2005) ‘The elusive public of television news’. In Livingstone, Sonia ed., Audiences and Publics: when cultural engagement matters to the public sphere. Bristol: Intellect Press 

Madianou, M. (2005) ‘Desperately seeking the news public’. Journal of Media Practice, vol.6(1): 29-39 

Recent Grants and Awards

2011 Top Paper Award, Feminist Scholarship Division, International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference, Boston, May 2011 for peer reviewed paper: ‘Technologies of Motherhood: New Media and the accentuated ambivalence of migrant mothers’.

2007-2010 Awarded ESRC Research Grant on ‘Migration, ICTs and the transformation of transnational family life’.

2006-7 Early Career Fellowship, Awarded by the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge. Title of project: ‘News and Emotion’.

2002-2004 Postdoctoral Fellowship held at the Department of Anthropology, awarded from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

2001-2004 Young Scholar’s Award, Changing Media-Changing Europe research programme, European Science Foundation.  

Conference Organisation

‘Digital Diasporas’, CRASSH, January 13-14th 2011. Conference convenor: Dr. M. Madianou

The conference will address the convergence of two parallel developments, global migration and the flow of symbolic forms and digital interactive media, which are having profound consequences for our transnational world. New developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as the internet and mobile phones combined with a collapse in the cost of international communication are together transforming the experience of migration with implications for family life, sociality and intimacy, identity and political involvement. Through a series of panels and presentations, this interdisciplinary conference will assess the impact of digital media on the following aspects of migration: representation, visibility and participation; culture and identities; family separation; social life; patters of migration and policy implications. Finally, the conference will provide an opportunity to reflect on ‘the digital’ and what is new about new media.
For more information please see: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1328/

‘The Ethics of Media’, CRASSH, 4-5 April 2008
Co-convenor with Prof. Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths', University of London).
More information can be found here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/67/

Teaching

Undergraduate teaching:
Course Organiser: SOC4: Media, Culture and Society.

Lecturer:
SOC4, Media, Culture and Society: 24 lectures in the modules: Theories of Media and Culture; Political Communication and New Media and Society.

SOC2, Contemporary Societies and Global Transformations: 8 lectures on Culture, Media and Globalisation. 

Postgraduate teaching:  
I teach on the MPhil in Modern Societies and Global Transformations (Media and Culture module) and supervise MPhil students.

Doctoral Students: 

Jonathan Corpus Ong
M. Ozan Asik 

Quick links

Sociology homepage

Faculty Website

Hermes webmail

College Admissions

University prospectus