Home

Amanda Alencar is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

She specializes in media and migration and intercultural communication. Her research and work focus on how communication technologies are shaping mobility and sociocultural integration processes of refugees in diverse contexts. Recently, she was a visiting fellow with the Refugee Studies Centre at University of Oxford, where she developed part of her new research project ‘Digital integration, livelihoods and forced migrations’. Alencar received her PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Journalism from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 2012. She obtained a PhD fellowship from the Galician government (Maria Barbeito Pre-doctoral Grant, Xunta de Galicia) for her thesis Intercultural Mediatization of Social Space: A Comparative Content Analysis of Spanish and Brazilian Television News Programs (summa cum laude).

After completion of her degree, she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship to conduct her research project entitled TV New for Promoting Interculturalism: A Novel Step towards Immigrant Integration at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has also been involved in various (inter)national research projects on interculturalism, diversity and cinema in Europe and South America (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain), the effects of narrative messages on Muslim integration in the Netherlands (ASCoR, University of Amsterdam), and the use of collaborative digital games to foster intercultural integration of refugees at Dutch schools (Utrecht University), among others. She is author of several international publications in journals such as Communication Research, Information, Communication & Society, Journalism, European Journal of Communication; Media, Culture & Society, Sociology Compass, Global Perspectives, etc.

More recently, Alencar received the Vital Cities and Citizens-Trustfunds Grant to study the ways in which digital media technologies can be effectively and creatively employed by refugee and host community actors to enhance social inclusion in the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Alongside her academic work related to refugees, she coordinates a digital training programme for students with a refugee background as part of their preparatory 1-year program at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Other positions

Vice Chair (and chair as of 2021) of the Intercultural Communication Division within the International Communication Association (ICA)

Editorial board member of the International open access journal Media and Communication

Editorial board member of the International peer-review journal Frontiers in Communication | Section Culture and Communication

Board member of the Professional Advisory Committee (PAC) at the Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Invited Board Member of the Intergenerational Gaming Platform – Utrecht University and University of Amsterdam.

Former positions

Former member of the Editorial Board of the International Yearbook of Lusophone Communication of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and the Galician Association of Communication (AGACOM).

Institutional website: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/amanda-paz-alencar