New Lecturers and PhD Candidates to join the Department of Media & Communication in February

The Department of Media & Communication will be welcoming nine new colleagues in February. The newly appointed academics will join the staff of the International Bachelor Communication and Media and Master Media Studies as lecturers, and some are PhD candidates who will be joining several research projects within our Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture.

A special Welcome Session has been scheduled for Wednesday 6 February for them to get to know the workings of the department, their new colleagues, and of course each other!

Below are some short bios to briefly introduce students, staff, and other interested parties to these new lecturers and researchers in our department.

Truus Huisman, MSc (Lecturer)
Truus has over 25 years of experience in Communications with a specialisation in Sustainability, Public Affairs and Issues Management. Before joining the IKEA Foundation as Head of Communication, she was part of Unilever’s European Leadership team in Rotterdam as VP Sustainable Business and Communications. Prior to this, she led Unilever’s Global Issues, Crisis Management and Media Relations in London, and was also responsible for Unilever’s EU Affairs office in Brussels. She is a winner of the European Public Affairs Award. Her experience outside Unilever includes management of professional organisations, e.g. as Secretary General of a European trade association in the field of tourism as well as consultancy where she worked for a number of companies such as Coca-Cola and Rio Tinto.
Truus studied History and Management of International Organisations at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She specialised in Sustainable Business at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and in Social Finance at the Oxford Said Business School. She was a trainee with the US Congress and The European Institute in Washington, DC. She has contributed to a number of publications and articles on issues, crises and stakeholders management, and co-authored a book for students to study abroad.

Roy Borghouts
Arne van Lienden (PhD Candidate)
Arne van Lienden (1995) is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication, and Culture. His research focuses on the content and production of discourses surrounding race/ethnicity in Polish televised football and the audience receptions of these discourses. Arne’s research is part of the NWO-funded research project How racist is televised football and do audiences react? and is conducted under the supervision of dr. Jacco van Sterkenburg (co-promotor), with prof. dr. Susanne Janssen as the promotor.
Arne obtained his bachelor degree in American Studies at the University of Groningen in 2016. He obtained a joint master degree in European Studies from the University of Groningen and Jagiellonian University Krakow in 2018. His master thesis Performing the Self: Identity and Glocalism in European Football Fandom focused on the cultural performances of fanatic football fans in four European countries and the reproduction of global and local symbols in reinforcing their primary socio-political identifications. Before joining the Erasmus University, Arne has taught in the European Languages and Cultures bachelor program at the University of Groningen.
Carmen Longas Luque (PhD Candidate)
Carmen Longas Luque is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus Research Center for Media, Communication & Culture. Her research focuses on the role of discourses of race/ethnicity in televised football production and how these discourses are articulated at the nexus of televised football content and audience receptions. This project is part of the research project funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) entitled How racist is televised football and do audiences react? Carmen’s research is supervised by dr. Jacco van Sterkenburg (co-promotor), with prof. dr. Susanne Janssen as the promotor.
Carmen received a bachelor’s degree in Pyschology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2014), after which she obtained a research master’s degree in Behavioural Science from Radboud University Nijmegen (2018). In her master’s thesis she explored teacher attitudes and beliefs towards students with an ethnic minority background, and how these attitudes and beliefs influenced teachers’ culturally responsive practices.
Carmen’s research interests cover a variety of themes related to social inequalities, postcolonialism, media representations and education.
Marina Machado, MSc (PhD Candidate)
Marina Machado is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture. Supervised by prof. dr. Susanne Janssen, dr. Jason Pridmore, dr. Yijing Wang, and dr. Vidhi Chaudhri, Marina’s research focuses on Innovation Adoption and Communication Management, examining the diffusion of innovation and strategic communication strategies to increase uptake of ‘Building Information Modelling’ in Europe. The project is part of ‘BIM-SPEED’, a research project funded by the European Union, which aim is to enable organisations in the building sector to adopt BIM and reduce delays in the renovation process, creating an affordable and accessible BIM cloud platform, and increasing energy performance for renovated buildings.
Marina received a Bachelor Degree in Architecture and Urban Planning with distinction by the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – Brazil, followed by a Masters in Business Administration by the Faculdades Ibmec Rio de Janeiro – Brazil. Working in architectural practices and contractors, Marina had a successful career in the construction industry.
Marina’s recent experience in academia includes a Masters in Building Information Modelling and Integrated Design at the University of Salford in Manchester-UK, which she graduated with distinction. During that time, she worked at the University of Salford as an associate researcher at the Knowledge Partnership project which investigated strategic implementation of Building Information Modelling.
Dr. Alexandra-Elissa Necula (Lecturer)
Dr. Necula has obtained her PhD in Mass Communication in 2018 from Sogang University, Republic of Korea, while her previous education includes a Master’s in Media Communication and Advertising (2012) and two Bachelor’s in Journalism (2010) and, respectively, Political Sciences (2010), all three granted by Hyperion University, Romania.
Her research interests are directed towards Mass Communication and Advertising, with a focus on Consumer Behavior, specifically in Entertainment, but not only. She has research experience with both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and has an affinity for analysis and criticism. She has several publications in this area, including two journal articles, “Animals and K-pop – A Case Study on the Symbolism of Wild Animals in Korean Pop Music Performances” (2016) and “The Hallyu Influence. K-pop on Foreign Lands” (2016), and the PhD thesis, “Restored behavior in K-pop performances. Liminal experience, fantasy, the American influence, and how to overcome cultural barriers” (2018). Secondary fields of interest revolve around Performance Studies, Narrative Construction and Cinematic Analysis and Criticism, elements from these areas being debated in her publications as well.
During her 5 years as a Korean Government Scholarship Grantee for PhD studies, she has received several acknowledgements for writing, stage production and video/image editing, with awards for Essay Composition, Video Editing and Musical Production. She has a Certificate for Intermediate Korean Language, and also has various photo/video editing projects in her portfolio (including promotional videos and logos).
Apart from her multicultural experience in the republic of Korea as both a PhD candidate and a volunteer English Instructor, she also has extended experience in the academic environment as Student Body Representative, with key responsibilities in matter of event organizing and project coordinating. She has also had a collaboration as video editor for a Romanian record label, and has written as a freelancer on several occasions.
Dr. Olivier Nyirubugara (Lecturer)
Dr. Nyirubugara started his teaching career in 2012 right after completing his PhD in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He taught various courses related to journalism and media, amongst other subjects, at Erasmus University Rotterdam (2012–2016 & 2019–) at both the BA and MA levels. He has also been working as senior lecturer in Journalism, Media Theory, and Research Skills, among others, at The Hague University of Applied Sciences since 2013.
Dr. Nyirubugara’s current research interests are focused on Ethics of Journalism, more specifically on the ethics of war reporting and on the ethical challenges of live-blogging. His latest paper titled “Shooting Kids” (published in Journalism Studies, 2018) is about visual representation of children in the international press coverage of the Syrian civil war. Next to that, his research investigates the workings and political and social implications of collective memory in post-genocide Rwanda.
Prior to embracing his academic career, Dr. Nyirubugara worked as a journalist both in Africa and Europe for international media outlets including the UN News and Information Agency (IRIN), Radio France International, Deutsche Welle, The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Africa News. Between 2007 and 2015, he coordinated a citizen journalism project that aimed to empower grassroots reporters throughout Africa. He trained and coached more than 100 citizen journalists in 8 African countries.
Tessa Oomen, MSc (Research Assistant)
Tessa is a research assistant at the Department of Media & Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is part of the project team for SecureHospitals project (EU Horizon 2020 Funded, 2018-2021), a project that aims to raise awareness on cybersecurity in health care facilities across Europe and to boost cooperative training initiatives on this topic. Her work in this project involves the assessment of current strategies and practices in cybersecurity and developing new mediated activities for awareness and knowledge. In addition, Tessa works to develop relevant research in the (cyber)security field.
Tessa received her Bachelor’s degree in Applied Psychology (BASc) and graduated from Leiden University’s Master’s programme Crisis and Security Management (MSc). After graduating from Leiden University, Tessa worked as a research and education assistant at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs of Leiden University. Here she contributed to multiple project proposals for Horizon 2020 and to research into the nature of interdisciplinary research in Security Studies.
Tessa’s research interests are cybersecurity, (influencing) human decision-making, Security Studies, interdisciplinary research, and Crisis Management.
Dr. Marco Scalvini (MA, MPhil, PhD) (Lecturer)
Dr. Scalvini is a lecturer in the Media and Communication Department of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research takes a strongly interdisciplinary approach, drawing on social and cultural theory, he combines qualitative inquiry with computational linguistics. His key interest is in media ethics, broadly understood as the moral implications of mediated communication in contemporary public life. Specifically, he has investigated how media shapes our ethical and political awareness, how it informs the ways we witness the vulnerability of the others, and the ways we are invited to feel, think and act towards society.
Currently, he is writing on the moral implications of contemporary advertising. His monograph, “Moralising the Public” is an attempt to explore how and why advertising increasingly offers its narratives as a form of moral guidance, teaching lessons about diversity and offering to remind us what significance to attribute to factors such as ethnic and cultural background or religion, and to competing values such as social status and private life.
Marco received his MA and MPhil from New York University (NYU), and his PhD in Media and Communication from the London School of Economics (LSE). Prior to joining the faculty at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Marco was a Lecturer in Marketing and Communication in the Global Dimension Program at LSE Enterprise (LSE) and has worked as a consultant for several international organizations (UN, OSCE, G8/G20) and corporations.
Recently, he worked as an advisor for the “I’m Worth...” campaign, funded by Gilead Sciences, which aims to encourage and empower people living with hepatitis C and HIV. He also advised Netflix in improving the guidelines to support vulnerable viewers of the TV show “13 Reasons Why”.
Wouter Scheepstra (Lecturer)
Wouter Scheepstra is a journalist (Volkskrant, Parool, etc.) and a documentary filmmaker (such as NTR). He specializes in stories about health care and psychiatry. In the stories he makes, 'the people behind the numbers’ play an important role. How do they act at crucial moments in their lives? And what are the consequences? Wouter teaches in the Dutch master programme Media & Journalism. During his workshops he introduces students to the journalism practice. He studied at the School for Journalism in Utrecht.