Dr Emma Heywood

BA; MA (Manchester); PhD (Manchester)

School of Journalism, Media and Communication

Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Radio and Communication

Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes (PGT)

e.heywood@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 2541

C638, The Wave

Full contact details

Dr Emma Heywood
School of Journalism, Media and Communication
C638
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH

Profile

Emma is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Radio and Communication and the School's Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes (PGT). She is the Impact Lead and Research Fellow at the Sheffield Institute for International Development, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Her teaching practice has been recognised with a Vice Chancellor's Award for Learning and Teaching from the University of Sheffield. She has recently published her fifth book, a monograph entitled Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa (Palgrave).

Her research focuses on the role and impact of radio in conflict- and crisis-affected areas and has led multiple externally-funded projects, including, amongst others, an ongoing study examining the impact of radio on gender-based violence amongst internally displaced persons in Burkina Faso, a large UKRI-funded project investigating perceptions and representations of women’s rights and empowerment by radio in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso; and an urgent Covid-19 response project funded by Elrha examining the use of radio and social media to address misinformation about the pandemic among internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Burkina Faso. These projects build on current work by the FemmePowermentAfrique project, which Emma leads.

Emma has also examined foreign conflict reporting of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by Russian, French and UK television news providers and also audience perceptions of this reporting. She has previously been awarded British Academy funding for her West Bank project, which investigated the role of local radio in NGO activities in war-affected zones. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the West Bank and now in West Africa.

She is a regular consultant for international UN bodies working on radio and development projects in conflict areas.

Emma is also the chair of MeCCSA's Radio Studies Network (RSN).

Research interests

Emma's research interests lie in the role of radio in fragile and conflict-affected zones, and she works closely with international media development agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs). She is the principal investigator of the FemmePowermentAfrique project, which has conducted large-scale qualitative and quantitative research into the impact of radio on women's empowerment in Francophone West Africa, particularly Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.

Her research focuses on the role and impact of radio in conflict- and crisis-affected areas. She has been awarded several external research grants which financed projects on perceptions and representations of women’s rights and empowerment by radio in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso and the use of radio and social media to address misinformation about the pandemic among internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Burkina Faso. She is currently working on a study examining the impact of radio on gender-based violence amongst internally displaced persons in Burkina Faso, having just completed a cross-institutional international project producing ‘information capsule’ podcasts for actors involved in media practice (practical journalism) in conflict-ridden Burkina Faso. These projects build on current work by the FemmePowermentAfrique project, which Emma leads. She has also conducted research, funded by the British Academy, into the interaction of radio and NGOs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Emma has published widely on these topics and on her extensive field research. Her fifth book, a monograph entitled Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa (Palgrave), was published in 2024 and her co-edited hybrid academic and text book, Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service: Trauma and Resilience, will be published in April 2024 (Peter Lang).

Publications

Books

Heywood E (2024) Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa. Springer Nature.
Heywood E (2017) European Foreign Conflict Reporting: A Comparative Analysis of Public News Providers. London: Routledge.

Edited books

Aryaeinejad K, Reed A & Heywood E (Eds.) (2023) Researching Violent Extremism: Considerations, Reflections, and Perspectives. RESOLVE Network.
Fenby-Hulse K, Heywood E & Walker K (Eds.) () Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher. Routledge.

Journal articles

Heywood E & Yaméogo L (2023) Radio and social media as a two-way communication tool in conflict- and pandemic-affected communities in Burkina Faso. African Journalism Studies.
Heywood E, Meuter S & Ivey B (2022) Reaching hard-to-reach communities: using WhatsApp to give conflict-affected audiences a voice. International Journal of Social Research Methodology.
Heywood E & Ivey B (2021) The significance of ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’ forms of audience participation to community radio in Niger and Mali. Journal of Alternative & Community Media, 6(2), 179-196.
Heywood E & Ivey B (2021) Radio as an empowering environment : how does radio broadcasting in Mali represent women’s ‘web of relations’?. Feminist Media Studies. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E, Ivey B & Meuter S (2021) Evaluating academic and media nongovernmental organization partnerships for participatory data gathering. International Journal of Market Research, 63(1), 43-57. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E & Harding S-A (2020) ‘If you’ve done a good job, it’s as if you’ve never existed’: Translators on translation in development projects in the Sahel. Translation Studies. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E (2020) Radio Journalism and Women's Empowerment in Niger. Journalism Studies, 21(10), 1344-1362. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E & Tomlinson M (2020) The contribution of citizen views to understanding women’s empowerment as a process of change: the case of Niger. Feminist Media Studies, 20(5), 713-729. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E (2018) Increasing female participation in municipal elections via the use of local radio in conflict-affected settings: the case of the West Bank municipal elections 2017. Journalism. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E & Goodman S (2018) How Palestinian students invoke the category "human" to challenge negative treatment and media representations. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E (2018) The work of women’s NGOs on commercial radio in the West Bank: Frustrations and shortcomings. Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 16(1), 59-75. View this article in WRRO
Heywood E (2015) Comparative Representations of the Middle East: National Values and Russian State-aligned Media. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 23(2-3), 195-211.
Heywood E (2015) Comparing Russian, French and UK television news: portrayals of the casualties of war. Russian Journal of Communication, 7(1), 40-52.
Heywood E (2014) Comparative media: Vremya’s manipulation of foreign conflict reporting in Russia in the context of Western news providers. Slovo, 26(1), 2-17.
Heywood E, Fierens M & Yaméogo L () ‘Radio as usual’? Digital technologies and radio in conflict-Affected Burkina Faso. Journalism.
Heywood E & Harding S-A () The ‘Contrôleuse’: Recognising the Role of the ‘Fixer’ in Academic and Media NGO Development Partnerships. Development in Practice. View this article in WRRO
Yaméogo L & Heywood E () La radio et le défi de la mobilisation contre la COVID-19 : l’exemple des personnes déplacées internes à Kaya, Pissila et Kongoussi au Burkina Faso. RadioMorphoses.

Chapters

Heywood E (2024) Introduction, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change (pp. 1-53). Springer International Publishing
Heywood E (2022) Radio's role in empowering women in conflict-affected areas, The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies (pp. 318-326). Routledge
Heywood E (2019) Reflection, Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher (pp. 155-157). Routledge
Graham H, Hill K, Matthews P, O’Brien D & Taylor M (2019) Connecting epistemologies and the early career researcher, Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher (pp. 106-126). Routledge
Heywood E (2017) Compassion as a News Value: Comparing French and UK Humanitarian Coverage of the War in Gaza 2014 In Anderson, R. & de Silva, P. L. (Ed.), Routledge Companion to Media and Humanitarian Action (pp. 211-220). New York: Routledge.
Heywood E (2017) Perceptions of Foreign Conflict: Reporting of the War in Gaza in 2014 In hodgson G (Ed.), Conflict, Trauma and the Media : A Collection of Essays Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Heywood E () Reflection, Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher (pp. 155-157). Taylor & Francis

Teaching activities

Emma is the Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes (PGT) for the School of Journalism, Media and Communication. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (awarded by Advance HE) and her teaching practice has been recognised with a Vice Chancellor's Award for Learning and Teaching from the University of Sheffield.

Emma is the module leader for JNL6099 Radio and NGO Communication in Conflict-Affected Areas and JNL326 Radio and Development. She is also a member of the team which teaches the award-winning 120-credit level-one JNL120 programme Essential Journalism. She supervises MA and BA dissertations.

PhD supervision

Emma is interested in supervising doctoral students in the following
areas of research:

Radio, the media and international development / conflict-affected areas
The role of radio in a changing media context
Women’s empowerment and international development/conflict-affected areas

Current PhD students

Maryam Shams: The evolution of media coverage practices in conflicts: France in Chad (1968-2014), an exemplary case study

PhD study in journalism, media and communication