The Head of LBM UW – Professor Tomasz Gackowski – and Marlena Sztyber-Popko have taken up positions in the prestigious Mediatization Section of ECREA.

Prof. Gackowski will serve his second term as Co-Chair, while Marlena Sztyber-Popko has been elected as Vice-Chair.

The other members of the management team include:

Katalin Feher (University of Public Service, Hungary) – Co-Chair

She is a researcher and expert in the field of AI-driven digital media. Her research interests focus on the socio-cultural impact of artificial intelligence technologies. She is a Fulbright Research Fellow (USA), founder and collaborator at AI Media Research, a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Budapest Business University, and the Head of Research and Innovation at the Digital Identity Agency.

Bieke Zaman (KU Leuven) - Vice Chair

Is a professor in Communication Sciences and Human-Computer Interaction at the KU Leuven in Belgium. Via both fundamental and applied research, she is casting a mediatization perspective on communication practices and interaction flows as they manifest themselves in assemblages of people, connected/digital media and data. Working within the tradition of participatory design research, Bieke also pursues methodological advancements, fostering meaningful interactions between people and digital technologies. Working within interdisciplinary networks, she explores how to bridge the realms of science, society, art, design and hybrid realities. She is the founding director of the interdisciplinary KU Leuven Digital Society Institute since 2021. Within the ECREA network, she has taken up leadership positions within the Children, Youth and Media Section (2017-2021 as Vice-Chair; 2021-2023 as Chair).

Xiaoxian Wang - (KU Leuven) - Vice Chair

Is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Media Culture & Policy Lab at KU Leuven in Belgium. As a digital ethnographer, her research explores the mediatization of people’s practices, persona and identities, and social relationships through social media platforms. Her work has been published and disseminated in international journals, books, and conferences. She also supervises master’s theses and teaches courses about media and societal crisis, digitalization, influencer culture, and creator labor in the Department of Communication Science at KU Leuven.

Priscila Van Even (KU Leuven) - Vice Chair

Is an interdisciplinary, intercultural, and transdisciplinary postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at KU Leuven, with an academic background spanning communication sciences and media studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, development studies, and philosophy. Her research expertise includes the mediatization of science and its communication, visual literacy, (inter)cultural communication, and public science dissemination. She serves as a board member and scientific steering committee member of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), co-chairs the Digital Ethics Group at The Digital Society Institute of KU Leuven and is an active member of the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) network.

Mao Zhuoran (Université Grenoble Alpes in France) - Communication Officer

Is a Lecturer-Researcher (qualified Associate Professor) in Information and Communication Sciences at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France. He is a member of the GRESEC laboratory. He teaches information- documentation, data economics and automated information processing in the Department of Sociology. His research, which explores mediatization processes using computational communication methods, is involved in several national research projects and is supported by the French government’s “France 2030” project.

ECREA is a scholarly society for communication researchers, dedicated to advancing communication research and higher education in Europe.

ECREA is organized into 25 thematic sections, each focusing on a distinct area of communication research, 4 temporary working groups that address new or underrepresented fields within media and communication studies, and 3 permanent networks representing specific socio-demographic categories of researchers.

For more information, please visit the website: https://ecrea.eu/