Dr Emma Heywood
BA; MA (Manchester); PhD (Manchester)
School of Journalism, Media and Communication
Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Radio and Communication
Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes (PGT)
+44 114 222 2541
Full contact details
School of Journalism, Media and Communication
C638
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Emma is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Radio and Communication and the School's Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes (PGT). She is the Impact Lead and Research Fellow at the Sheffield Institute for International Development, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Her teaching practice has been recognised with a Vice Chancellor's Award for Learning and Teaching from the University of Sheffield. She has recently published her fifth book, a monograph entitled Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa (Palgrave).
Her research focuses on the role and impact of radio in conflict- and crisis-affected areas and has led multiple externally-funded projects, including, amongst others, an ongoing study examining the impact of radio on gender-based violence amongst internally displaced persons in Burkina Faso, a large UKRI-funded project investigating perceptions and representations of women’s rights and empowerment by radio in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso; and an urgent Covid-19 response project funded by examining the use of radio and social media to address misinformation about the pandemic among internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Burkina Faso. These projects build on current work by the project, which Emma leads.
Emma has also examined foreign conflict reporting of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by Russian, French and UK television news providers and also audience perceptions of this reporting. She has previously been awarded British Academy funding for her West Bank project, which investigated the role of local radio in NGO activities in war-affected zones. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the West Bank and now in West Africa.
She is a regular consultant for international UN bodies working on radio and development projects in conflict areas.
Emma is also the chair of MeCCSA's (RSN).
- Research interests
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Emma's research interests lie in the role of radio in fragile and conflict-affected zones, and she works closely with international media development agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs). She is the principal investigator of the FemmePowermentAfrique project, which has conducted large-scale qualitative and quantitative research into the impact of radio on women's empowerment in Francophone West Africa, particularly Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.
Her research focuses on the role and impact of radio in conflict- and crisis-affected areas. She has been awarded several external research grants which financed projects on perceptions and representations of women’s rights and empowerment by radio in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso and the use of radio and social media to address misinformation about the pandemic among internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Burkina Faso. She is currently working on a study examining the impact of radio on gender-based violence amongst internally displaced persons in Burkina Faso, having just completed a cross-institutional international project producing ‘information capsule’ podcasts for actors involved in media practice (practical journalism) in conflict-ridden Burkina Faso. These projects build on current work by the project, which Emma leads. She has also conducted research, funded by the British Academy, into the interaction of radio and NGOs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Emma has published widely on these topics and on her extensive field research. Her fifth book, a monograph entitled Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa (Palgrave), was published in 2024 and her co-edited hybrid academic and text book, Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service: Trauma and Resilience, will be published in April 2024 (Peter Lang).
- Publications
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Books
- Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa. Springer Nature.
- . Peter Lang Verlag.
- European Foreign Conflict Reporting: A Comparative Analysis of Public News Providers. London: Routledge.
Edited books
- . RESOLVE Network.
- ..
Journal articles
- . Journalism Studies.
- . Journalism.
- . Media, War and Conflict.
- . Journalism.
- . African Journalism Studies.
- . RadioMorphoses, 8.
- . International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 27(1), 107-121.
- . Development in Practice, 32(2), 188-200.
- . Journal of Alternative & Community Media, 6(2), 179-196.
- . Journalism, 22(7), 1702-1719.
- . Feminist Media Studies, 22(5), 1050-1066.
- . Translation Studies, 14(1), 18-35.
- . International Journal of Market Research, 63(1), 43-57.
- . Journalism Studies, 21(10), 1344-1362.
- . Feminist Media Studies, 20(5), 713-729.
- . Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 29(2), 133-145.
- . Radio Journal: international studies in broadcast and audio media, 16(1), 59-75.
- . Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 23(2-3), 195-211.
- . Russian Journal of Communication, 7(1), 40-52.
- . Slovo, 26(1), 2-17.
Chapters
- Local journalists and trauma in Burkina Faso, Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service: Trauma and Resilience (pp. 79-88).
- Introduction, Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service: Trauma and Resilience (pp. 3-8).
- , Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 137-164). Springer International Publishing
- , Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 55-85). Springer International Publishing
- , Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 225-232). Springer International Publishing
- , Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 87-110). Springer International Publishing
- , Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 165-194). Springer International Publishing
- , Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 195-223). Springer International Publishing
- , Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 111-135). Springer International Publishing
- In Haywood E (Ed.), Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa (pp. 1-53). Palgrave Macmillan Cham
- , The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies (pp. 318-326). Routledge
- , Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher (pp. 155-157). Routledge
- , Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher (pp. 106-126). Routledge
- Compassion as a News Value: Comparing French and UK Humanitarian Coverage of the War in Gaza 2014 In Anderson, R. & de Silva, P. L. (Ed.), Routledge Companion to Media and Humanitarian Action (pp. 211-220). New York: Routledge.
- Perceptions of Foreign Conflict: Reporting of the War in Gaza in 2014 In hodgson G (Ed.), Conflict, Trauma and the Media : A Collection of Essays Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
- Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa. Springer Nature.
- Teaching activities
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Emma is the Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes (PGT) for the School of Journalism, Media and Communication. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (awarded by Advance HE) and her teaching practice has been recognised with a Vice Chancellor's Award for Learning and Teaching from the University of Sheffield.
Emma is the module leader for JNL6099 Radio and NGO Communication in Conflict-Affected Areas and JNL326 Radio and Development. She is also a member of the team which teaches the award-winning 120-credit level-one JNL120 programme Essential Journalism. She supervises MA and BA dissertations.
- PhD supervision
Emma is interested in supervising doctoral students in the following
areas of research:- Radio, the media and international development / conflict-affected areas
- The role of radio in a changing media context
- Women’s empowerment and international development/conflict-affected areas
Current PhD students
- Maryam Shams: The evolution of media coverage practices in conflicts: France in Chad (1968-2014), an exemplary case study