The University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) today announced that Journalism Assistant Professor Maria Celeste Wagner will be joining Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, as an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies in fall 2024.

Wagner, who is also an affiliate faculty member in the UF Center for Latin American Studies, joined the College in 2022 after receiving her Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Wagner studies processes of media reception and influence around political and social issues, particularly intersecting gender inequalities in the Americas. Some of her recent publications analyzed the reception of Turkish television dramas in Argentina (Journal of Communication); the emotional experiences, interpretations, and practices of consuming news and perceived misinformation during times of political polarization in the U.S. (Journalism, Digital Journalism); the role of the perceived gender of journalists on the promotion of ideas around the severity of sexual harassment (Cuadernos.info); and the experiences of watching television entertainment in Argentina and the United States (International Journal of Communication).

During her tenure at UFCJC, Wagner published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Communication and presented research at more than six academic conferences, including those organized by the National Communication Association (NCA), the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the American Political Science Association.

In 2023, she received four awards for her dissertation research, “Responding to Media Coverage of Gender-Based Violence in Argentina and the United States: A Mixed Methods Study of the Intersecting Roles of Gender, Class, and Racialized Ethnicity Among General and Activist Publics,” including the 2023 NCA Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award, the NCA Political Communication Division 2023 Lynda Lee Kaid Outstanding Dissertation Award, the NCA International and Intercultural Communication Division 2023 Best Dissertation Award, and ICA Global Communication and Social Change Division’s 2023 Best Dissertation Award.

In 2023, she received the College’s International Educator of the Year award for junior faculty. Additionally, she was selected by UF’s International Center as a cohort member of their Global Learning Institute, a program designed to internationalize and globalize the curriculum.

Wagner teaches an undergraduate class “Media, Cultures and Identity,” a graduate level course on “Academic Writing” and co-teaches an upper-level undergraduate course on “Women and Gender in Media.’ Previously, in both Argentina and the United States, she taught introduction to communication, history of the media, social scientific methods, and critical approaches to popular culture. In 2015, she received a Teaching Award at Universidad de San Andrés, given to the best Teaching Assistant at the university.

She is also faculty affiliate at the Center for Latinx Digital Media at Northwestern University, a member of the organizing committee of the “Media & Communication in Global Latinidades” pre-conference at ICA; a research affiliate at the Center for Media and Society in Argentina, and a member of the journal Digital Journalism’s Editorial Board.

Posted: February 28, 2024
Category: College News
Tagged as: Journalism, Maria Celeste Wagner, Rutgers University