Department of Media and Communication

The Department of Media and Communication

Where We Are Located?

Room 802
Attenborough Building
University of Leicester
University Road
Leicester
LE1 7RH
United Kingdom

Who We Are

The Department of Media and Communication is part of the University of Leicester’s Faculty of Social Sciences. It was newly launched in 2006 and evolved out of the Centre for Mass Communication Research (CMCR). CMCR was the first academic centre to be established in the United Kingdom dedicated to the study of media and communication. The launch of the Department of Media and Communication is testament to the growing commitment being made by the University of Leicester to research and teaching in this area.

Under this new arrangement, CMCR was incorporated within the larger department as a research centre that specialises in research into mass communications issues.

The aim of the Department of Media and Communication is to continue in the long tradition of CMCR and provide a supportive and stimulating learning environment for students at all levels from all parts of the world. Top quality teaching and supervision is informed by a dynamic and productive research culture. Students are taught be staff from diverse backgrounds who are actively engaged in leading edge research in their specialist fields.

Our teaching and research covers media history and media innovations in local, national and global contexts. Our courses are based on the very latest developments in media and communications scholarship. We offer high quality training in research methods and techniques for students at all levels. This training is provided by academics who are experienced research practitioners. Our courses are enhanced by content that derives from the original research activities of our academic staff.

We welcome enquiries from anyone interested in studying media and communications at undergraduate or graduate levels. In addition to our campus-based tuition, we also offer graduate students the opportunity to study remotely through our established distance learning programme.

History

Academic scholarship in media and communications at the University of Leicester began in 1966 with the birth of the Centre for Mass Communications Research. Initially, CMCR was a research centre that offered some PhD supervision. Its doctoral graduates include many distinguished academics, media professionals and policy-makers based in the UK and around the world.

In the late 1970s, the UK’s Social Science Research Council (now the Economic and Social Research Council or ESRC) invited CMCR to design and launch the first taught MA degree in Mass Communications. The course became a great success and now attracts 40 or more students a year from all over the world.

In 1992, CMCR launched its BSc in Communications & Society. Then, in 1995 it offered its MA in Mass Communications by distance learning for those students who wished to study part-time from home. Since the turn of the millennium, further taught postgraduates degrees have been launched including an MSc in Media and Communication Research (in 2000) as a research training programme for research degree students, and an MA in Globalisation and Communication (in 2001).

A New Era

In 2006 we celebrated the 40th anniversary of media and communications scholarship at Leicester and at the same time mark the launch of an expanded academic centre of excellence in the field in the shape of the Department of Media and Communication. Within this department, the Centre for Mass Communication Research is continuing as a research centre pursuing research interests in media audiences and media effects through funded research and its cluster of doctoral students.

The Department of Media and Communication supports and encourages a variety of research interests and approaches to the study of media, communications and information technologies. The academic staff members derive from a range of disciplines that have had an important place in the development of the study of media and communications, including cultural theory, film theory, linguistics, politics, psychology, and sociology.

We promote and engage in multi-disciplinary research that embraces different epistemological and methodological approaches and believe that research can have value by being theoretical sound and having real-world applications.

Our research feeds our teaching. Students therefore benefit from being taught by academics who are involved in leading edge research in their specialist fields.