Professor of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London

Professor Fenton's research is concerned to address one of the most complex and vital issues of our age - the role the media play in the formation of identities and democracies and why and how people seek to change the world for socially progressive ends.

Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. This work has focused on the ways in which technological, economic and social change is reconfiguring news journalism and shaping the dynamics of the public sphere and public culture. This research led to my involvement as a founding member of the Media Reform Coalition and as vice-chair of the Board of Directors for the campaign group Hacked Off – both of which campaign for a free, plural and accountable media.

Co-Director of the new Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy. In this forum I seek to interrogate the relationship between the media and resistance - either as a dominant social force which through uniformity of representation encourages digression, or as a means of forging other identities and developing alternative political projects. I am particularly interested in notions of new media, networks and progressive politics; notions of political hope and rethinking our understanding of public culture, public sphere and democracy.