Personal statement

Michael Higgins has been at the University of Strathclyde since 2007.  He has been subject leader for Journalism and established the School's highly-successful MSc in Media and Communication.

Michael's PhD students have included recipients of AHRC and Carnegie Trust scholarships, and range across political communications, political engagement on social media, and the representation of politics and gender.

Michael has published seven books, including with Open University Press, Routledge, Cambridge University Press and Bloomsbury, five special issues, and more than seventy peer-reviewed journal articles, reviews and book chapters.  His next book is called Conflict Culture: Anger in a Mediated World (co-authored with Angela Smith), to be published by Routledge in 2026.

Michael has also appeared as expert analyst on a variety of media, such as Al-Jazeera News, and BBC Radio 4's 'Broadcasting House' and 'Word of Mouth', and sat as judge for national entrants to The Press Awards.

External academic posts have included Visiting Professor in Political Communications at Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome, as well as external examiner on programmes at the Universities of Cardiff, Liverpool and Nottingham.  He is current external examiner for the University of Swansea and the American College of Greece (Deree). 

Michael serves on the editorial boards of Communication Theory, Journal of Language and Politics, as well as the advisory boards for the Bloomsbury International Library of Gender and Popular Culture and LUISS's Centre for Media and Communication Studies "Massimo Baldini". He established the Mediated Populism section of Palgrave Communications and was guest editor from 2018 until 2023.

Michael's own research networks include the international Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Group and the Media and Politics Group of the Political Studies Association, of which he was co-convenor for a number of years.