Paul Mihailidis

Dr. Paul Mihailidis is a professor of civic media and journalism and special advisor to the provost. He teaches on the topics of media literacy, civic media, community activism, and digital media and culture. He is also faculty chair and director of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change.

Mihailidis's academic interests in civic media and community engagement are closely connected to his leadership work in higher education. As a scholar with an established research record, including 8 books and over 100 papers, book chapters, and reports, he has collaborated across disciplines to explore how civic media interventions can support inclusive, just, and equitable futures. He's consulted around the world on news and media literacies as tools for civic empowerment and meaningful engagement in communities.

Mihailidis has two books forthcoming: Equitable Media Literacies features a normative model for care-based media literacy practices, and Pedagogies of Persistence in an Age of Transaction advocates for human-centered engagement in this digital environment. In 2023, he was commissioned by the Kettering Foundation to produce a report titled “Restoring Civic Health in a Culture of Distance,” which highlights how media have inserted distance between people and their proximal environments, and what we can do to re-establish meaningful relationships to the institutions we rely on for robust civic health. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Scientific American, Slate, CNN, USA Today, and Newsweek, among others. Mihailidis was honored with the national researcher of the year award from the National Association of Media Literacy Education and was profiled in The New York Times Education Life section.

Since joining Emerson in 2011, Mihailidis has brought in over $1.3 million in grants to support research, public/civic projects, and new technologies. Most recently, he oversaw the Mapping Impactful Media Literacy project, which is funded by a $250K grant to research and design more impactful media literacy approaches for educators and practitioners building equity-driven media-based initiatives with their communities.

Mihailidis holds a visiting professorship at Bournemouth University in England and serves on the advisory board for NAMLE and iCivics. He holds a PhD in media and journalism from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park; an MPhil in media and publishing from University of Stirling; and a BA in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.