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 and Caliandro, Alessandro (2020) Framing #Brexit on Twitter: the EU 27’s lesson in message discipline? The British Journal of Politics and International Relations , 22 (3). pp. 439-459. ISSN 1369-1481
Šimunjak, Maja (2019) Political leaders, media and authoritarianism in Croatia: the media strikes back? East European Politics . ISSN 2159-9165 (Published online first)
Šimunjak, Maja and Nenadić, Iva and Žuvela, Lana (2019) National report: Croatia. In: 2019 European Elections Campaign: Images, topics, media in the 28 Member States. Novelli, Edoardo and Johansson, Bengt , eds. European Parliament, Brussels, pp. 59-66. ISBN 9789284649853
Šimunjak, Maja and Caliandro, Alessandro (2019) Twiplomacy in the age of Donald Trump: Is the diplomatic code changing? The Information Society: An International Journal , 35 (1). pp. 13-25. ISSN 0197-2243
Šimunjak, Maja (2018) From a leader-centred to a party-centred system? The curious case of media (de-)personalisation in Yugoslavia and Croatia, 1945–2015. Europe-Asia Studies , 70 (9). pp. 1496-1514. ISSN 0966-8136
