About our guest

Danielle K. Brown, Ph.D. is the 1855 Community and Urban Journalism Professor and an associate professor in the School of Journalism. She is also the founding director of the LIFT Project -- an engaged research effort aimed at identifying networks of trusted messengers in Black communities in the Midwest to 1) understand their effects on civic and democratic life; 2) create, network, and allocate resources needed to inform Black communities better; and 3) build new opportunities for sustainable reparative narrative change. Dr. Brown's interdisciplinary and community-engaged scholarship utilizes the cross-sections of journalism, political science, and sociology. She specializes in analyses of media representations and narrative change, social movements and activism, and identity and political psychology. Dr. Brown has published dozens of articles in top-tier journals, and her work also appears in popular media outlets like the Washington Post, Nieman Lab, Columbia Journalism Review and The Conversation.  Much of her research and work has been supported with the more than $1.5 million in external funding she has secured from foundations and non-profit organizations like the Knight Foundation, Global Impact, Robert Wood Johnson, and Color of Change. She has received multiple awards and recognitions for her research and service record as an early-career scholar and her pioneering public engagement work. Dr. Brown is an associate editor for the International Journal of Press/Politics, and serves on the editorial board for Journalism Practice. She previously served on the faculty at the University of Minnesota and Indiana University. Prior to joining the academy, she was a photojournalist, writer, and later a non-profit public relations professional. Her full curriculum vitae is available here. 

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