Peter Gross
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- International and comparative mass communication, media, and journalism
- International information and communication law and policy
- Foreign-language/ethnic media inthe United States and in East Central and Southeast Europe
Dr. Peter Gross, a journalism professor who specializes in international communication, began his duties as director of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media August 1, 2006.
Gross came to UT from the University of Oklahoma, where he served as a professor and Gaylord Family Endowed Chair in International Communication at OU's Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. He also served as the director of the College's Institute for Research and Training and head of the college's journalism area.
Multilingual, Gross has worked and traveled extensively in Western and East/Central Europe, in some former Soviet Republics (Belarus, Moldova, Tajikistan), Taiwan, India, China and Cuba. Since 1985, he has directed journalism workshops and lectured at the University of Dortmund, Germany; Oxford University, England; Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania; the universities of Madrid, Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, Murcia and Barcelona, Spain; University of Tirana, Albania; the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland; the University of Bucharest, University of Timisoara, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, and the Black Sea University, Romania; The Association of Georgian Journalists, Tiblisi, Georgia; the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; International Summer School for Democracy, Petrovac, Montenegro, FR Yugoslavia; The University of Salzburg, Austria; Shanghai University, China).
He was instrumental in establishing a new journalism program in 1992 at the University of Timisoara, Romania. He has also lectured at Georgetown University and Rutgers University, and at the U.S. Department of State, and continues to teach at its National Foreign Affairs Training Center (School of Professional and Area Studies – Foreign Service Institute). Gross has carried out training and/or assessment assignments on behalf of the U.S. Information Agency (U.S. Department of State), the Voice of America's International Training Program/International Broadcast Bureau, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Academy for Educational Development. He has also conducted journalism-training seminars in the U.S. and in country for journalists and journalism students from Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Kosovo, Kyrghyzstan, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Serbia-Montenegro, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekhistan. He served as consultant on East European media issues to the Washington D.C.-based International Media Fund, The Freedom Forum, and the Eurasia Foundation, and as an educational consultant to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, Czech Republic, among other governmental and non-governmental institutions.
In 2001, Dr. Gross was placed on the Fulbright Senior Specialist Roster. He has received 46 other fellowships, research, lecture and training awards and grants from, among other institutions, Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, J. F. Kennedy School of Government; the National Academy of Sciences; the International Research and Exchanges Board; the Pacific Cultural Foundation; the International Media Fund; the Soros Foundation; the German Marshall Fund of the United States; the Freedom Forum; and the National Science Foundation. In 1996, he was a research fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
He is the author of Entangled Evolutions. Media and Democratization in Eastern Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press/ Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002) and Mass Media in Revolution and National Development: The Romanian Laboratory (Iowa State University Press, 1996), for which he received the 1996 American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences Book Award. He is co-author of Media and Journalism in Romania , published in Germany (Vistas Verlag, 2006), and Eastern European Journalism. Before, During and After Communism (Hampton Press, 1999). He also authored three books published in Romania, Mass Media and Democracy (Polirom, 2004), Introduction to Newswriting and Newsgathering (Editura de Vest, 1993), and Giants With Feet of Clay. The Post-Communist Romanian Press (Polirom, 1999); and co-authored, The Basics of Public Relations (NIM Press, 1998). He is the co-editor of Understanding Foreign Correspondence: A Euro American Perspective of Concepts, Methodologies and Theories (Peter Lang Publisher, 2011) and Media Transformations in the Post-Communist World. Eastern Europe's Tortured Path to Change (Lexington Press, 2013)..
Dr. Gross has published dozens of articles in American and European academic and professional journals, as well as 24 book/monograph chapters. Scores of his newspaper articles have been published in Europe and in the U.S. He serves/ed on the editorial boards of the AEJMC International Communication Bulletin (USA), Central European Journal of Communication (Poland), Journal of Global Mass Communication (USA), Journalism Studies (England), Journalism & Communication (Romania), Dilema, a national, intellectual weekly (Romania), Journal of Romanian Press History (Romania), Media Transformations (Lithuania), Revue des Sciences Politiques (Romania), Philobiblo (Romania), and Mediakutato, the Hungarian Media Studies Journal.
In 2009, the State of Romania awarded Gross one of the highest national awards, the “Order of Merit in Education,” Commander Grade. The President of Romania confers the award, by decree, for “unusual merit in the development of education of different types, levels and forms of organization, and in research, or (for) contributing to establishing relationships between foreign educational institution and Romanian ones.” The University of Bucharest, Romania, awarded Gross the Doctor Honoris Causa in 2005 for his contributions to Eastern European media studies. In 2009, the University of West Timisoara, Romania, also awarded him the Doctor Honoris Causa for his contributions to Eastern European media studies and his role in establishing the university's journalism program in 1992.
Gross is a member of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and served as Chair of Teaching Standards, Chair of the Markham International Student Paper Competition and Chair of Professional Freedom and Responsibility for the association's International Communication Division. He is/was a member of the European Communication Research and Education Association and the European Network for Trans-Integration Research, the South East European Studies Association, the Society for Romanian Studies, the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, COST A30, a research group sponsored by the European Union, and the International Communication Association. He was on the Board of Directors of the American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences and served as its Vice President, 1997-2001. He is also a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (Tennessee Chapter) and serves as the Scientific Advisor (media/communication issues) to the International Center for Protest Research, Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the "Press Freedom and Media Systems in Europe," a project sponsored by the European Union and headquartered at the University of Salzburg, Austria.
Since finishing his Ph.D. in 1984 at the University of Iowa, Dr. Gross has presented papers at scholarly conferences in the Belarus Republic, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Georgia, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, and the U.S.A.
University of Iowa (Ph.D. 1984, M.A. 1977)