Supervisor: Lilie Chouliaraki| and Jennifer Jackson-Preece|
Research Topic: The European Public Debate on Islam
Research Interests: Language and Globalization, Socio-Semiotics, neo-Gramscian Theory, Critical Discoure Analysis
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I am currently a Doctoral candidate in Media and Communications and will complete the degree requirements by Summer 2012.
My background includes professional experience as media professional in public and political communication (UNESCO, OSCE, UN, G8/G20). I have also completed a MA/MPhil degree at New York University, where I developed a specific interest in the interdisciplinary inquiry into culture and society by considering the nature of language and communication within its larger social, historical, and intellectual contexts.
This ongoing attention to language and communication became a turning point in my career. As a consequence, I began a new PhD at the LSE in Media and Communication where I focused on Critical Discourse Analysis with Professor Lilie Chouliaraki| and Europen Studies with Dr. Jennifer Jackson-Preece|. These three years of work and study have given me a strong foundation in the theory of media and communication and the empirical investigation style necessary to understand the interrelationship between social science and political theory in depth.
Specifically, my research now is largely aimed at revealing how norms, values, rules, arguments, and political practices are established through the creation of social and political discourse. I do not reduce social reality to merely an abstract semiotic process; instead I consider public debate to be a valued discursive arena that not only reproduces, but also strengthens social, political, and economic relations.
In terms of my methodological preferences, my research orientation is qualitative and interpretive. Specifically, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is the main approach I have applied in my recent research work, because it is considered an established methodology in the social sciences as it systematically explores discursive practices in broader social and economic structures that are already well embedded and familiar in the ongoing public sphere.
The interdiscursive nature of the CDA further allows one to illustrate more easily and in greater detail the differences between the national and the transnational public debate and examine whether and how discourses and their values are actually linked in the public debate. In particular, I refer to the linguistic tradition of the Dialectical-Relational Approach (DRA) because of its orientation toward a more concrete-complex analysis of extra-discursive domains.
PhD Project
My PhD thesis is based on a discourse analysis of the public debate on Islam in Europe. It critically reflects on the apparent incongruity between the affirmation of universal citizenship norms and the portrayal of Muslim migrants as a modern threat to European order and stability. Taking this point of departure the thesis seeks to identify commonalities-in-difference by looking into the shared strategies of discourse through which forms of exclusion are articulated differently and uniquely, depending on the cultural and political particularities of their national contexts.
In so doing, the thesis very effectively draws attention to the emergence of a common European public sphere, one that animates the current national identity debate within and between European Union member states. The obvious public policy implication of this argument is that the current securitization of Islam in Europe is predicated on a normative shift that potentially calls into question the liberal Universalist principles on which the post-war European order was constructed. Thus, the European public sphere, as I argue, may be fractured in terms of these radical particularities, and yet still emerge as a distinct political entity precisely to the extent that ultimately political discourse converge in a construal of Islam as a non-European Other.
Semiotic Analysis
My first peer- reviewed article "Glamorizing Sick Bodies|" (published in Socialsemiotics| by Routledge and listed at the 14th position of the most read articles of that journal|) discusses the representations of HIV/AIDS in commercial advertising and their change over time. The article traces the shift in AIDS/ HIV representations from the early 1990s, when images of decay and disease represented AIDS, to today when the wider availability of antiretroviral medications and their ability to prolong life has produced new representations of HIV-afflicted bodies.
Advertising in this case was able to re-establish the definition of a sick body through the representation of HIV people who today are leading normal lives where everything is possible. On the other hand, those representations do minimize the seriousness of the HIV infection and fail to take into account the real dangers of contracting HIV and accurately representing life with HIV and AIDS.
Hence my research aim was not to simply describe the social construction of disease, but rather to employ a visual semiotic model to show how the meaning of the sick body has gradually evolved over time across three different levels of analysis--the plastic, iconic, and textual.
Teaching Experience
As a teaching assistant at the LSE, I have gained invaluable experience leading Master student discussions in the field of Media during the Mclab workshops. In addition to classroom instruction, I advise students on appropriate research topics, evaluate their qualitative and quantitative research designs, and review reported results and discuss research findings and analysis of them in terms of the students’ final dissertation efforts.
This year, I was also appointed class teacher for a new LSE100 course|. LSE100 is a compulsory interdisciplinary course aimed at developing critical skills in undergraduate students coming from different departments. In the course, students learn how to analyze a contemporary social problem by applying theoretical perspectives from more than just one social science discipline. A lot of attention is given to explaining questions, theories, examining evidence, and identifying the role of counterfactuals in delivering clear social science explanations.
Website: www.scalvini.eu|
Contact: m.scalvini@lse.ac.uk |