Rachel Mersey is Associate Dean for Research and also holds an appointment in the School of Journalism and Media, University of Texas at Austin. With more than a decade of experience in higher education and academic administration, she brings a passion for connecting scholarship and professional practice into grant-supported research and projects. She joins Moody College after serving at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications since 2008, most recently as associate dean for research and professor.
Mersey also held courtesy appointments in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences political science department and the School of Education and Social Policy learning science department. As a fellow at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research, Mersey supported research and creative-professional enterprises.
She previously served as executive director for the Media Leadership Center and was a faculty fellow in the year-long Big Ten Academic Alliance Leadership Program, designed to develop managerial skills of faculty and gain academic administration exposure.
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Mass Communication, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
- MSJ in Journalism, Northwestern University, USA
- B.A. in Communications and Studio Art, Wake Forest University, North Carolina, USA
- Pah, A., Schwartz, D. L., Sanga, S., Clopton, Z. D., DiCola, P., Mersey, R. D., Alexander, C. S., Hammond, K. J., & Amaral, L. A. N. (2020). How to Build a More Open Justice System. Science 369(6500), 134-136. [DOI: 10.1126/science.aba6914]
- Mersey, R. D. [with curator Jack Thomas Taylor] (2020). Breaking News: How the Smartphone Changed Journalism. Voices and Conversations, Media Majlis museum exhibition publication.
- Pavlik, J. V., Dennis, E. E., Mersey, R. D., & Gengler, J. (2019). Conducting Research on the World’s Changing Mediascape: Principles and Practices [commentary]. Media and Communication 7(1), 189-192.
- Pavlik, J. V., Dennis, E. E., Mersey, R. D., & Gengler, J. (2018). Mobile Disruptions in the Middle East: Lessons from Qatar and the Arabian Gulf Region in Mobile Media Content Innovation. New York: Routledge.
- Mersey, R. D. (2010). Can Journalism Be Saved? Rediscovering America’s Appetite for News. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.