Lia-Paschalia Spyridou

Lia-Paschalia Spyridou is Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus. She holds an MA in Communication from the University of Westminster and a PhD in New Media and Journalism from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. For almost a decade she worked as a journalist in television and magazines. In 2006-2007 she taught as Adjunct Lecturer at the department of Journalism and Mass Media of the Aristotle University and in 2007-2011 at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. In 2009-2011 she was Head of the Communication Department at New York College in Thessaloniki.  In September 2011 she starting working as Research Associate at the department of Communication and Internet studies at the Cyprus University of Technology and taught in the MA program Journalism and Digital Media. In 2012 she received an academic excellence grant for her postdoctoral research on participatory journalism from the Research Committee of the Aristotle University. Lia has been among the main research members of the www.choose4greece.com voting aid application and www.wereportcyprus.org (changed link to Facebook page as original link was dead), the first participatory journalism platform in Cyprus. Her research work has been published in academic journals such as the International Communication Gazette, Journalism Practice and Journalism: Theory, Criticism and Practice. Her research interests lie in the fields of the technologisation of journalism, newswork, participatory journalism, media and democracy, protest movements and activism, e-campaigning.