Dr Maja Šimunjak is a Leadership Fellow of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has previously held positions of Programme Leader for BA Journalism and Communication and BA Creative Writing and Journalism courses.
At Middlesex University she teaches modules on undergraduate and postgraduate journalism degrees, including Journalism Skills, Multimodal Journalism, Advanced Digital Journalism, Contemporary Journalism etc. Maja also regularly supervises final year projects, from dissertations to digital magazines and video documentaries.
Before joining Middlesex, Maja worked at the European University Institute, Bell Cambridge, and University of East Anglia. She also has extensive experience as a professional journalist and editor in various media outlets, including the positions of an editor and news anchor at a national television station, subeditor in daily newspapers and a radio journalist and anchor.
English, Spanish, Croatian
Maja Šimunjak is Module Leader on Journalism Skills, Multimodal Journalism, Political Communication and Independent project modules, and she supervises undergraduate and postgraduate creative projects and dissertations.
On a postgraduate research level, she supervises projects related to digital and social media, and invites proposals related to these topics, as well as political communication.
Maja’s research focuses on the media, journalism and political communication trends and practices, particularly in the context of social media.
She has been awarded the AHRC Leadership Fellow grant for the study of emotional labour in journalism in the era of social media. The project takes place in 2021-22.
Research projects she participated in previously range from analyses of social media, digital diplomacy, media reporting and journalistic cultures, to analyses of news management practices and hidden advertising.
In the past decade she was involved in a range of international research projects, including Media Pluralism Monitor, Varieties of Democracy and European Elections 2014 & 2019.
Šimunjak, Maja (2023) “You have to do that for your own sanity”: Digital disconnection as journalists’ coping and preventive strategy in managing work and well-being. Digital Journalism . ISSN 2167-0811 (Published online first)
Šimunjak, Maja (2023) Me, Myself and I: Selfies as vehicles of personalised politics in social media era. In: Research Handbook on Visual Politics. Lilleker, Darren and Veneti, Anastasia , eds. Edward Elgar, pp. 152-165. ISBN 978 1 80037 692 2
Šimunjak, Maja (2022) Twiplomacy. In: Encyclopedia of Technology and Politics. Ceron, Andrea , ed. Elgar Encyclopedias in the Social Sciences series . Edward Elgar, pp. 327-331. ISBN 9781800374256
Šimunjak, Maja and Menke, Manuel (2022) Workplace well-being and support systems in journalism: comparative analysis of Germany and the United Kingdom. Journalism . ISSN 1464-8849 (Published online first)
Šimunjak, Maja (2022) Tweeting Brexit: social media and the aftermath of the EU referendum. Routledge Studies in Media, Communication, and Politics . Routledge, London. ISBN 9781032037875
