Icr Illinois

The Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has one of the most renowned communications Ph.D. Recent Ph.D.

programs in the world. The Institute of Communications Research was founded in 1947 to address complex and urgent concerns about the growing dominance of media and mass communications in postwar public life. At a time when many academic disciplines were aspiring to greater specialization and professional sovereignty, the Institute fostered organic, collaborative and integrative scholarship. The In

stitute led the nation in offering doctoral training in communications research, attracting students whose intellectual strength and curiosity matches that of their mentors. And, like the Institute, the doctoral program began as a small and selective one, evolving organically with the entire campus as an intellectual resource. The Institute of Communications Research has evolved within the larger history of communications and media in this country. The Institute pioneered and remains a leader in the interdisciplinary scholarly study of media and communications, focusing broadly on the domains of systems and institutions, policy and history, and cultural theory and practice. This concentrated interdisciplinary effort to understand and explain the history, role and operation of mediated communication in today's society offers significant educational opportunities to graduate students and provides a rich resource for the campus as a whole. The Institute continues to be regarded as a leader and model for interdisciplinary communications programs. Students in the program study such topics as media economics, organization and structure; media policy; political economy of the media; new technologies and new media; telecommunications; advertising and consumer research; media ethics, media and communications history; social and cultural studies of science and medicine; popular culture and film; race ethnicity and gender; democracy and the media; and global/international communications. dissertations have addressed a wide range of topics, from intellectual property and cultural production in Africa, to the history of sound technology, to Chilean television infrastructure and policy, to advertising regulation in China.

05/12/2026

Icr congratulates ANN SHEA STRAHLE on her promotion to Full Professor. Congrats ANN!!!

04/25/2026

ICR at WHAT’s Research conference. BISH SEN, VICTOR PICKARD, MATT MCALLISTER, JACK BRATICH and TOM STREETER

04/23/2026

ICR at Race and Media conference . ERGIN BULUT and ISABEL MOLINA GUZMÁN representing us.

04/18/2026

ICR congratulates AISHA DURHAM on the publication of her latest article. Congrats AISHA!!!!

Bellied in Bahia In a two-part performance autoethnography exploring experiences of Afro-Bahian culture, the author traverses space and time to describe Black belonging during summerlong research travel to Brazil. ...

04/17/2026

Congratulations to Anirban Mukhopadhyay, a doctoral student in the Institute of Communications Research, for being chosen as a 2026-27 Graduate Student Fellow in the Humanities Research Institute at Illinois.

Mukhopadhyay joins six other graduate students and seven faculty members to focus on research, writing, and attending HRI activities throughout the year.

https://buff.ly/BWLvqtN

04/14/2026

CONGRATS to JULIE TURNOCK

Congratulations to Julie Turnock, professor of media and cinema studies, who was one of two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors to be awarded a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Turnock’s project, “Beyond 'King Kong,'” is a technical, industrial, and aesthetic history of the special-effects industry in the Hollywood studio era, circa 1915-1960, well before the digital era.

https://buff.ly/qwqbMw4

04/13/2026

ICR congratulates STEPHANIE PÉREZ, the recipient of the Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowship in Latino Studies at Dartmouth, 2026-2028. Congrats STEPHANIE!!!

03/31/2026

ICR congratulates MARGARET NG upon receiving prestigious CAS fellowship. Congrats MARGARET!

Margaret Ng, associate professor of journalism and a faculty member in the Institute of Communications Research, has been selected as a Center for Advanced Study Associate for the 2026–2027 academic year.

As a CAS Associate, Ng will take time off from teaching in Fall 2026 to advance her research on “platform migration,” focusing on how regulatory bans, algorithmic shifts, and geopolitical tensions drive user migration between social media platforms. She argues that these shifts are fueling digital nationalism and reshaping digital sovereignty in an increasingly fragmented society.

https://buff.ly/o1rFXYR