New lecturers and colleagues to join the department of Media & Communication in September

Maaike Aans, MA

Maaike will be working as a lecturer for the Minor Media, Culture and Society at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She holds a master’s degree in Intercultural Communication, which she obtained cum laude at Utrecht University in 2017. For her thesis she researched intercultural communication between bereaved parents and social workers in hospitals. Her research was in the top three best Academic theses of the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University in 2017.

Maaike has been working as an Academy Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ since 2018. In that role she is responsible for the curriculum design and implementation of training programmes related to (intercultural) communication. She trains and teaches a wide variety of people, such as diplomats, security sector professionals, civil servants, and mediators in the Netherlands and abroad. Her interest lies in the influence of culture on the way people think, communicate, and behave. She mainly focuses on intercultural communication and its effects on diplomacy and (interpersonal) conflict.

Giulia Bidassi

Giulia Bidassi is an Italian junior lecturer at the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Her research mostly focuses on the media communication of structural, social, and cultural issues such as diversity and inclusion within organizations and societies.

Western gender issues and female leadership representation were the objects of study in her MA thesis; the focus was on the political influence on the storytelling around gender, as well as the role that women in decision-making positions in media outlets play when it comes to frame female leaders.

Furthermore, Giulia’s teaching focuses on academic skills and research’s qualitative techniques on the social-scientific study of media and communication.

Giulia holds degrees from the University of Udine (Italy) and Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands). She obtained her degree from the latter in the program Media and Business in 2021.

Alexandre Diallo

Alexandre Diallo is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Alexandre earned a PhD in Sociology at the French School for Social Sciences (EHESS) in September 2018. His PhD dissertation examined whether French people accepted movie star’s and football star’s earnings. To do so, he used both qualitative and quantitative methods, working with a total sample of 59 interviewees and conducting 55 semi-structured interviews. The quantitative part of his research consisted of a statistical analysis using multiple data sources (INSEE, WID, annual pundit surveys…), in order to provide an account of the evolution of movie and football stars’ earnings, in relation to the general evolution of incomes and incomes in the top percentiles (top 1%, top 0.1%, top 0.01%, and top 0.001%).

Before joining the Department of Media and Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Alexandre was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University Paris 1 Panthéon La Sorbonne. He has taught research-led courses at Sciences Po Paris, AgroParisTech and Paris Sciences et Lettres to graduate (and undergraduate) students.

Alexandre’s research interest lie in the study of consumers’ demand for Entertainment (sport, TV series, cinema).

Outside, Alexandre is a member of two think tanks (Sport and Citizenship, L’Observatoire des images), for which he has co-written publications and taken part in public debates on gender inequality and racism. Alexandre is also an art critic, contributing regularly for  French literary journal Revue Esprit.

Alexandre holds an MPhil in International Economics at University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, a Master in Management from ESCP and an MPhil in Social Sciences from EHESS.

Mariana Fried

Mariana Fried is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus Research Center for Media, Communication and Culture. Her research project, funded by the NWO PhD in the Humanities grant, is titled “Beyond the Silicon Valley story: An ethnographic approach to digital workers’ discursive production of smart cities” (co-promotors: dr. Isabel Awad, dr. Jiska Engelbert, promotor: prof. dr. Susanne Janssen). The project focuses on the (discursive) practices of on-demand platform workers, tech entrepreneurs and tech company employees and on the way they reinterpret, reproduce, and transform the so-called smart city.

Mariana holds a MA in Media, Culture and Society (2019, cum laude) and a MSc in Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts (2020, cum laude) from the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. In 2020, she joined the Erasmus Initiative Vital Cities and Citizens to conduct research on the themes Inclusive Cities and Smart Cities. Her previous research focused on journalistic practices in relation to linguistic sexism and advertising’s representation of sexual minorities.

Raymond Harder

Raymond Harder is a Lecturer at the department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

After completing the Research Master in Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam, he obtained a PhD in the same field from the University of Antwerp in 2018. His academic work is focused on the interaction between technology and journalistic practices. In his previous research, he studied how news stories spread through the contemporary news landscape, the ways in which media outlets use Twitter as a source for news, and he examined right-wing politicians' posts on social media.

Most recently, he worked for the Flemish Press Council, where he was responsible for conducting a research project about the state of media self-regulation in Europe. In addition, he lectured on journalism studies and research design at the University of Antwerp.

Alysa Karels

Alysa Karels is a junior researcher at the Media and Communication department. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Media and Communication and a master’s degree in Media and the Creative Industries. Her field of interests include advertising, popular culture, new and social media and their effects on cultural identity formation.

Her research tasks are dedicated to the INVENT project in which she closely collaborates with INVENT project leader prof. dr. Susanne Janssen and dr. Marc Verboord.

Sara Lambrechts

Sara Lambrechts works as a junior lecturer in the Department of Media & Communication in the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She teaches several courses in the International BA in Communication and Media (IBCoM), including Introduction to Human Communication, Academic Skills, Digital Content, and Introduction to Statistical Analysis.

She holds a BSc degree in Social Sciences from Ghent University and the Free University of Brussels (VUB) where she wrote her Bachelor Thesis on adolescents’ attitudes towards pornography. Additionally, she graduated cum laude from the MA in Media, Culture and Society at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2021. Her Master Thesis focused on the use of different social media platforms by Flemish politicians.

Sem Oosse

Sem Oosse is a lecturer in the Department of Media & Communication where he teaches introductory courses on research design and methods. In his academic work his main interest lies in explaining and understanding the cultural underpinnings of institutional distrust. For his Master thesis, he interviewed scientifically literate climate change sceptics to provide an in-depth cultural sociological understanding of their distrust in institutionalised climate science. In the future, he would like to further explore the topic of institutional distrust by doing a PhD.

Before doing the Sociology pre-master at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB), Sem obtained a BSc in Water Management. After his pre-master, he earned an MSc in the international Sociology Master Politics & Society. He earned his second Master’s degree in the Research Master programme Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts from the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication.

Sophie Sasse

Sophie Sasse is a lecturer at the department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. After completing her bachelor’s in Communication and Media (EUR), she graduated Cum Laude from the master Media & Creative Industries (EUR) and then completed a research master in Sociology (EUR). Her accumulated expertise lies in qualitative research, focusing passionately on contemporary social inequalities (i.e., gender, race, & sexuality), activism and policy. Sophie’s research master thesis, by example, focused on how Black Lives Matter activists perceive the role of the corporate sector in the movement’s fight against racism. Outside of academia Sophie is a sports enthusiast and avid traveller.

Yvette Vermeer

Yvette Vermeer is a lecturer in Media and Communication at the Department of Media and Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

She specialises in the fields of sociology such as media and surveillance and has an expertise in Gerontechnology. Accordingly, she successfully completed her PhD programme focused on portrayals of people living with dementia using surveillance technology at University College London. Here she also collaborated with Alzheimer Nederland, Alzheimer Europe, and the World Health Organisation. In addition, she was a visiting fellow at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden in 2017 and University of Alberta Canada in 2015 where she gained experience in teaching and research.  

Furthermore, she has a master’s degree in consumer behaviour, and a bachelor’s degree in commerce and management. Yvette also gained work experience as a marketing and communication employee at diverse companies. Nowadays, as the owner of Write Way, she hosts workshops focused on wellbeing and provides mindful support with academic writing.

Job Zomerplaag

Job Zomerplaag is junior lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication. He also assists in the development, coordination and teaching of the IBCoM Honours Program. 

Next to his position at Erasmus University, Job (co-)creates and coordinates storytelling productions, art-science collaborations, and public events at Studio Europa, a centre of expertise for Europe-related debate and research founded in 2018 and supported by Maastricht University, the Province of Limburg and the City of Maastricht. He is a board member of TAAT, a performative spatial practice, and founder of the awarded storytelling platform Spread Stories, Not the Virus.

Job holds a BSc in Media & Communication Sciences (cum laude) from Erasmus University and studied Urban Studies at universities in Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid as part of the Erasmus Mundus MSc in Urban Studies (summa cum laude). He expects to complete an MSc in Public Policy and Innovation Governance from UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University in September 2021.