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 Elrha 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 FemmePowermentAfrique 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 Radio Studies Network (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 FemmePowermentAfrique 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.
- Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service. Peter Lang Verlag.
- European Foreign Conflict Reporting: A Comparative Analysis of Public News Providers. London: Routledge.
Edited books
- Researching violent extremism: considerations, reflections, and perspectives. RESOLVE Network. View this article in WRRO
- Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher: Lived Experiences, New Perspectives..
Journal articles
- Journalists at the Frontline: Recognising and Managing Emotions in the Face of Conflict and Terrorism in Burkina Faso. Journalism Studies.
- Radio journalism and podcast news in the Global South. Journalism.
- A cog in a wheel? Journalism under pressure during coups d’etat in Burkina Faso. Media, War and Conflict. View this article in WRRO
- ‘Radio as usual’? Digital technologies and radio in conflict-affected Burkina Faso. Journalism. View this article in WRRO
- Radio and social media as a two-way communication tool in conflict- and pandemic-affected communities in Burkina Faso. African Journalism Studies.
- La radio et le défi de la mobilisation contre la COVID-19 : exemple des personnes déplacées internes à Kaya, Pissila et Kongoussi au Burkina Faso. RadioMorphoses, 8.
- Reaching hard-to-reach communities: using WhatsApp to give conflict-affected audiences a voice. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 27(1), 107-121. View this article in WRRO
- The “contrôleuse” : recognising the role of the “fixer” in academic and media NGO development partnerships. Development in Practice, 32(2), 188-200. View this article in WRRO
- The significance of ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’ forms of audience participation to community radio in Niger and Mali. Journal of Alternative & Community Media, 6(2), 179-196.
- Increasing female participation in municipal elections via the use of local radio in conflict-affected settings: The case of the West Bank municipal elections 2017. Journalism, 22(7), 1702-1719. View this article in WRRO
- Radio as an empowering environment : how does radio broadcasting in Mali represent women’s “web of relations”?. Feminist Media Studies, 22(5), 1050-1066. View this article in WRRO
- ‘If you’ve done a good job, it’s as if you’ve never existed’: Translators on translation in development projects in the Sahel. Translation Studies, 14(1), 18-35. View this article in WRRO
- Evaluating academic and media nongovernmental organization partnerships for participatory data gathering. International Journal of Market Research, 63(1), 43-57. View this article in WRRO
- Radio journalism and women’s empowerment in Niger. Journalism Studies, 21(10), 1344-1362. View this article in WRRO
- The contribution of citizen views to understanding women’s empowerment as a process of change : the case of Niger. Feminist Media Studies, 20(5), 713-729. View this article in WRRO
- How Palestinian students invoke the category "human" to challenge negative treatment and media representations. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 29(2), 133-145. View this article in WRRO
- The work of women’s NGOs on commercial radio in the West Bank: frustrations and shortcomings. Radio Journal: international studies in broadcast and audio media, 16(1), 59-75. View this article in WRRO
- Comparative Representations of the Middle East: National Values and Russian State-aligned Media. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 23(2-3), 195-211.
- Comparing Russian, French and UK television news: portrayals of the casualties of war. Russian Journal of Communication, 7(1), 40-52.
- Comparative media: Vremya’s manipulation of foreign conflict reporting in Russia in the context of Western news providers. 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).
- Radio, Women, and Inheritance, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 137-164). Springer International Publishing
- Radio, Women, and Politics, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 55-85). Springer International Publishing
- Conclusion, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 225-232). Springer International Publishing
- Radio, Women, and Finances, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 87-110). Springer International Publishing
- ‘We’re More Than Just a Radio’: Radio Scout and Its Women’s Listening Associations, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 165-194). Springer International Publishing
- Radio, Women IDPs, and Women Journalists, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 195-223). Springer International Publishing
- Radio, Women, and Life Within Marriage, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 111-135). Springer International Publishing
- Introduction In Haywood E (Ed.), Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa (pp. 1-53). Palgrave Macmillan Cham View this article in WRRO
- Radio's role in empowering women in conflict-affected areas, The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies (pp. 318-326). Routledge
- Reflection, Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher (pp. 155-157). Routledge
- Connecting epistemologies and the early career researcher, 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