Ellen Mickiewicz, Ph.D.

Fellow, Commission on Radio and Television

Ellen Mickiewicz is the James R. Shepley professor of public policy studies, professor of political science, and director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. A specialist on media and politics, especially in the former Soviet Union and Eastern/Central Europe, she is also a fellow of The Carter Center.

Her most recent book, "Changing Channels," is a study of the role and impact of television in Russia from 1985-1999. It analyzes the rise of modern, televised campaigning in post-Soviet Russia; the use of free television time for unmediated candidate communication with the public; editorial coverage by news organizations; and political advertising. It examines the volatile media market and the persisting contest for political control of television that has made the institutionalization of pluralism extremely difficult.

Dr. Mickiewicz was the first American to be honored by the 120,000-member Journalists Union of Russia for her contribution to the development of democratic media in the region. Her earlier book, "Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union," was given the Electronic Media Book of the Year award by the National Association of Broadcasters and the Broadcast Education Association, and she is the author or editor of five other books and numerous journal articles.

She is a graduate of Wellesley College and received her doctorate at Yale University. She held a Guggenheim Fellowship and has served on the advisory boards of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and currently, the International Journal of Press and Politics (Harvard University) and Political Communication. She was dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Emory University from 1980-1985 and a member of the political science faculty at Emory from 1985-1993.

In September 1997, Dr. Mickiewicz was awarded the Murray Edelman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Political Communication by the American Political Science Association.