About / À propos / Acerca de

Auksė Balčytienė is journalism and communications scholar and professor, and media critic.

In 1989 she has graduated from Kaunas University of Technology, and then pursued graduate and Ph.D. studies at the University of Joensuu in Finland (now: University of Eastern Finland). She defended the Ph.D. dissertation ‘Using Hypertext to Read and Reason’ and received doctorate in 1996.

She has returned to Lithuania in 1996, and became lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas where she taught courses on the impact of new media on cognition and communication. She also was working as consultant and media and communications expert at the Information Program developed and supported through the Open Society Fund Lithuania. She was also closely involved with new training programs and innovative educational projects and was a board member of the Foundation for Educational Change (1999-2000).

In 1998 she became core founding person of the Department of Journalism (which she headed in the period of 1998-2006) at the Faculty of Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy at VMU. Since its establishment the department activities were aimed not only to educate journalists and communication professionals, but also to advance media research in the Baltic countries.

Scholarly interests of Auksė Balčytienė are in media cultures and comparative studies, media policy, media/news literacy, international journalism and globalization, modernization and socio- political change in Central and Eastern Europe, political communication and mediatization, European reporting and European public sphere, media convergence and innovations.

She has a broad international network and professional contacts and is regularly teaching at various research and policy centers and academic institutions. She is also an active member of different professional associations (ICA, ECREA, IAMCR, she was a board member of ECREA: European Communication Research Association and Chair of ECREA’s CEE Network). She is active member of the EMRG: Euromedia Research Group (from 2008).

She is editorial board member of international refereed journals and academic book series (book series On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics published at Rodopi, and following journals: European Journal of Communication, Digital Journalism, Central European Journal of Communication, Media Transformations: Medijų transformacijos, Informacijos mokslai, Žurnalistikos tyrimai, Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, Javnost: The Public, Media Management Quarterly, Media and Communication).

Auksė Balčytienė has an extensive experience in collaborative project design, administration, and coordination. She is leading a number of international media research and journalism education projects (MPM: Media Pluralism Monitor with EUI); she also has been working with Freedom House analyses. She previously was closely involved in a number of projects funded through the European Commission (6FP projects: AIM, CINEFOGO); she was core leader/national representative in a number of internationally funded projects (through the European Science Foundation, Nordic Council of Ministers, German Research Foundation, Lithuanian Science and Research Foundation). She has been active in three COST program projects A20 and A30, and ISO906.

She is active in training of young scholars and researchers; she takes an active part in various Ph.D. schools and study networks (ECREA PhD Summer School: SuSo, Nordic and Baltic Networks for Ph.D. Studies). She also is a program committee member of two Ph.D. programs at VMU (Sociology, and Political Science).

For the period of nine years (2006-2015) she served as Vice-Rector for Public Communication and International Relations at VMU. Currently she is Professor of Journalism at the Department of Public Communications at VMU. She gives lectures in Media and Social Change and Risk and Crisis Communication (both on MA level), Communication Contexts and Cultures and Mediated Globalization (both on BA level).

She is active and experienced in review, analysis and consultancy work: she was advisory board member in different projects (Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Oxford, 2010-2013), worked as expert at the Academy of Finland, 2010-2012; She was a member of the Lithuanian Science and Research Council (Humanities and Social Sciences division, 2008-2010), she also was a member of the Council of the Lithuanian National Radio and Television (2008-2011). Currently she is an expert at the Lithuanian Science Council (from 2008), and Latvian Science Council (from 2015); acts as expert with the ERC Starting Grants (both in 2015 and 2017).

In 2018 she became chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in MIL for Inclusive Knowledge Societies.

Auksė Balčytienė has published widely in international refereed journals and academic books.

Source: ORCID.

(Ver. PBe 06-2022)