Dr Glenda Cooper

Overview

Dr Glenda Cooper is a Reader/Associate Professor in Journalism Studies at City St George's, University of London and director of the European Journalism Observatory UK, a network of 13 independent non-profit media research institutes in 11 countries, which aims to bridge journalism research and practice in Europe, and to foster professionalism and press freedom. She is an international expert in the study of: crisis and humanitarian reporting; journalism and ethics, particularly AI; live journalism; the journalism of Alistair Cooke 1946-2004; media reporting of crime (including deathknocks).

Before going on research leave until May 2026, she held the leadership roles of head of department, and previously deputy head of department and director of  BA Journalism. This included leading a team of 30 staff and 50 visiting lecturers, serving 500 students, achieving a 90.5% satisfaction rate in NSS and coming first in London for graduate prospects in our subject area (THE 2024; CUG 2024), and rated the best journalism department in the country in the Guardian University Guide in 2023.

A former senior journalist for many of the UK's leading media organisations, she believes strongly in educating the next generation of journalists - and understanding how journalism is evolving through production of high-quality academic research. She has been funded by the British Academy, ESRC, Google Digital News Initiative and HEIF amongst others. She has partnered with the British Red Cross, the BBC, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, The Ferret, Greater Govanhill and the interactive games makers Coney.

Glenda holds a PhD in journalism studies from City and an MA in English Lang and Literature from Oxford. Her books include 'Reporting Humanitarian Crises in a Social Media Age' (Routledge, 2018) and the edited collection 'Humanitarianism, Communication and Change' (Peter Lang, 2015) with Prof Simon Cottle and is currently completing a book on turning points in humanitarian coverage for Palgrave. She organised The Future of Humanitarian Reporting conference at City, with the keynote speaker Lyse Doucet and has presented on her research at all the major journalism conferences: ICA, IAMCR, Future of Journalism, ECREA and AEJMC.

Her interest in how the UK's political and cultural views of the US were formed by the BBC and in particular Alistair Cooke's Letter from America (1946-2004) led to her being awarded a British Academy grant with Prof Howard Tumber to research the work of Cooke, having gained the first academic permission to access both the Cooke family archives and the BBC archives into his work. She has worked at both the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University and the BBC archives at Caversham on this project. She is also part of a new project to set up a journalism archive at City with Dr Paul Lashmar. 

With the increasing focus on AI's impact on journalism, Glenda was also the co-investigator on the DMINR project funded by the Google Digital News Initiative, a collaboration between the journalism department and Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCID) department. The objective of the DMINR project was twofold: to investigate a tool for news research and verification based on artificial intelligence to help journalists work with big data and conduct investigations in the digital era. Second, it aimed to study the impact of artificial intelligence on newswork and journalists.

One of the other innovations in journalism is increasingly diverse storytelling as media organisations grapple with news avoidance and lack of trust. Glenda is also a researcher in the new field of 'live journalism' - the interaction of journalism and theatre. She co-founded the News on Stage project (https://newsonstage5.wordpress.com/) with Catherine Adams, Nottingham Trent University and they have produced five live events including News Cabaret and News on the Street, with HEIF funding. She is also the co-director of Contemporary Narratives Lab (https://contemporarynarratives.org/) and has worked with The Ferret and Greater Govanhill magazine to put on an event at The Tron, Glasgow, as well as interactive theatre makers Coney and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Her play Aid Memoir based on her PhD research was performed at the Pleasance Theatre, Islington and subsequently at the ESRC Festival of Social Science https://www.city.ac.uk/news/2018/september/aid-memoir-glenda-cooper.

Glenda has taught students across BA, MA and PhD levels to develop both practical skills and critical thinking. During her tenure as undergraduate programme director, BA Journalism ranked 1st nationally (Guardian University Guide 2023; Complete University Guide 2023) and 1st for Graduate Prospects (Sunday Times 2022), while NSS satisfaction rates reached 90.5% (2023/24). She has supervised PhD students who have covered subjects from political communication strategies during the 2019 Istanbul elections, to the manosphere's intersection with journalism. She devised a core journalism ethics module for final year journalism students and has deployed innovative teaching techniques. She holds an MA in Academic Practice, and in 2018 was selected as an AURORA role model for future women leaders in academia.

She is the reviews editor for Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, and a board member of The Conversation UK. She co-founded and co-presented The Knowhow podcast with Dr Lindsey Blumell which covered political and cultural issues bringing academics, journalists and policymakers together.

Before academia, Glenda was a staff reporter and feature writer at the Independent, Daily Mail, and a features editor for the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard. She was also a health reporter for the BBC News Channel and a correspondent for BBC Radio 4's World at One and PM programmes as well as the presenter of Channel 4 News's podcast The Morning Report. A former Independent and Sunday Telegraph columnist, she still freelances, primarily as a non-fiction book reviewer for the Mail on Sunday and is the current UK correspondent for ABC Australia 'Overnights' programme. During her award-winning journalist career she reported on such stories as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and spent a month in New York in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks reporting for the Washington Post. She was also commissioned for two three-part series for BBC Radio 4's PM programme - one from the US looking at the world of private military contractors, and one from Romania about the consequences of the changes to foreign adoption law there.

She was the 2001 Laurence Stern Fellow at the Post and the 2006-7 Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. 

Qualifications

• MA in Academic Practice, City, University of London, United Kingdom, October 2022
• PhD in Journalism, City, University of London, United Kingdom
• MA in Creative Writing, City, University of London, United Kingdom
• BA (Hons) English Language and Literature, St Hilda's College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
• PG Diploma in Newspaper Journalism, City University of London, United Kingdom

Employment

• Reader, City, University of London, United Kingdom, August 2022 - present
• Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City University of London, United Kingdom, March 2019 - August 2022
• Lecturer, City University of London, United Kingdom, September 2014 - March 2019

Teaching

Modules taught

- Media theory
- Humanitarian communication
- Multimedia journalism
- Print and online projects

2^ndsupervisor

• Yasmine Feital Cal�ado Barbosa, Research Student

Publications by category