Arles Faculty Director
To be announced
The professors for this project is to be announced. Check back soon and Get Started with ieiMedia to keep connected with updates for this project and more.
Arles Faculty
To be announced
The professors for this project is to be announced. Check back soon and Get Started with ieiMedia to keep connected with updates for this project and more.
Berlin Faculty Director
Nomi Morris
Nomi Morris is a lecturer in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara and director of the journalism track in the university’s professional writing minor. She covered the opening of the Berlin Wall for The Toronto Star newspaper then worked as a correspondent for five years in Berlin, including for the San Francisco Chronicle, CBC Radio and TIME.
Morris went on to become Senior Writer for international at Maclean’s, Canada’s national news magazine, and then moved to Jerusalem to become Middle East bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers (now McClatchy).
Since moving to Ojai, California, Morris has written for Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books and other magazines and literary journals. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing and previously taught at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism in Los Angeles, and Brooks Institute in Ventura.
Faculty
Barbara Demick
Barbara Demick is a prize-winning author and foreign correspondent. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages. Her newest book, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption and Separated Twins was published by Random House May 20, 2025 and
Vanessa Guinan-Bank
Vanessa Guinan-Bank works as a freelance journalist, reporter and audio producer based in Berlin. She was lead producer of the #1 narrative podcast series “Land ohne Vater” that documents a story of far-right terror, institutional failure and police misconduct in Germany from the perspective of the bereaved. For German national
Amara Aguilar
Amara Aguilar is a professor of journalism at University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She teaches social media storytelling for Latinx audiences, visual journalism, engaging diverse communities, design, and food journalism, among other courses. At USC, she co-founded Annenberg Media’s award-winning bilingual outlet, Dímelo, focused on
View complete faculty biographies on Our Professors under Current Faculty.
Bologna Faculty Director
Kathryn Lancioni
Kathryn Lancioni is lecturer in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She is an award-winning, internationally recognized expert in the field of communications and was recently named as one of PR News’ “People of the Year” in 2023. Her expertise lies in the intersection of communication, technology, and society. With more than 25 years of experience, Ms. Lancioni has a unique appreciation and understanding of its dynamic landscape working as a journalist, public relations executive, communications strategist, and college professor.Ms. Lancioni has worked for some of the world’s leading PR agencies, including Edelman, Ogilvy, and Weber-Shandwick, as well as with numerous global corporations, including ADP, Creditsafe, Deloitte, IBM, Intelsat, NCR, PanAmSat, Scientific Games, Smith+Nephew, and UPS. In 2006, she launched Presenting Perfection, a communications consultancy providing customized communication coaching and training, strategic guidance, branding, and PR support to domestic and global organizations.
Ms. Lancioni has also worked as a college professor teaching the nuances of communication to students in universities across the United States. She has served on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University, Montclair State University, Seton Hall University, St. John Fisher College, and William Paterson University. She has guest lectured at Columbia Business School, Cornell University, Rutgers University, and Temple University and has been the featured speaker at several international conferences.
She serves on the Advisory Council of Entrepreneurship at Cornell University, the Advisory Board of the Market Research Center at the Stillman School of Business of Seton Hall University, and is a Vice President of the Global Media Executive Council (GMEC).
Ms. Lancioni is the author of three books: Communications Research, Public Relations: The Changing Global Landscape, and The Practice of Public Relations, all published by Kendall Hunt. She hosts the podcast “Practically Speaking” and is a regular contributor to Medium. She is also a member of The Forbes Business Council.
She earned a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Cornell University and a Master of Science in Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University.
Bologna Faculty
Mark Rotella
Mark Rotella is the Director of the Joseph and Elda Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Montclair State University. In addition, Rotella also serves as thesis advisor in the MFA Program at Columbia University.
Earning his B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Columbia University in 1992, Rotella became the Senior Editor at Publishers Weekly, where he worked for nearly twenty years. He is also a former Board Member at National Books Critics Circle from 2015 to 2018.
Rotella’s first book, Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria (2004), recounts his travels to Calabria, the region in southern Italy from which his grandparents immigrated. His second book, Amore: The Story of Italian American Song (2010), tells of the era in American popular music during the mid-20th century dominated by Italian-American singers such as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Tony Bennett. He also wrote the introduction for the 2006 reissue of Carlo Levi’s classic 1945 memoir, Christ Stopped at Eboli.
He has published nearly four dozen articles in a wide array of outlets including The New York Times, New York Times Book Review, La Voce di New York, The L.A. Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Vanity Fair, Saveur Magazine, and NPR.org and has appeared on National Public Radio outlets across the U.S. (on flagship shows such as All Things Considered and the Leonard Lopate Show), CBS’s The Insider, Entertainment Tonight, and ABC News.
In August 2020, Rotella was appointed Director of the Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America.
Cagli Faculty Director
John Caputo
John Caputo is Professor Emeritus in the Master’s Program in Communication and Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University and the Walter Ong S.J. Scholar. He founded the MA Program in 2004. Dr. Caputo earned his Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School and University Center. He has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Italy. He has been teaching communication courses for more than 35 years and has appeared on radio and television news and discussion programs. His areas of expertise include communication theory, intercultural and interpersonal communication, and media and social values. He is the author of seven books: Effective Communication Handbook; Communicating Effectively: Linking Thought with Expression; Dimensions of Communication; Interpersonal Communication: Competency Through Critical Reasoning, which was co- authored with Bud Hazel and Colleen McMahon; Public Speaking Handbook: A Liberal Arts Perspective with Bud Hazel; McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture which he co-edited with Mark Alfino and Robin Wynyard for Praeger Press and his newest book, Effective Communication. John Caputo has written more than 35 articles in professional journals, has been honored as a Visiting Scholar In-Residence at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, La Sapienza University of Rome and the Master’s Program in Media and Communication at the Universita de Firenze, Italy. He has been honored with Master Teacher Awards by the Western States Communication Association and the University of Texas at Austin and has received an Exemplary Faculty Award from Gonzaga University. He has been taking student groups to Italy for many years and has been part of the Cagli Project since 2002. In 2016 he helped create a Sister City between Spokane, Washington and Cagli, Italy. He was made an Honorary Citizen of the city of the City of Cagli, Italy, and is the President of the Sister Cities Association of Spokane, Washington.
Cagli Faculty
Paula Nelson
Paula Nelson works with both graduate and undergraduate students guiding them to discover their creative potential and to emphasize intention in every aspect of still
Kristine Crane
Kristine Crane is an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville, where she is also working on a
Giovanni Caputo
Giovanni has dual Italian and American citizenship and speaks half a dozen languages. Aside from teaching in Italy, Giovanni has spent time teaching at various
Kyoto Faculty Director
Rachele Kanigel
Rachele Kanigel is a professor and former chair of the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University. She was a daily newspaper reporter for 15 years as well as a freelance correspondent for TIME Magazine. She has written for U.S. News & World Report, Health, Reader’s Digest, San Francisco Magazine and other magazines and websites. She is the author of The Student Newspaper Survival Guide and The Diversity Style Guide. In 2019 she spent 10 weeks as a Fulbright Specialist teaching and training faculty at Royal Thimphu College in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. She has directed ieiMedia programs in Urbino, Perpignan, Arles and Jerusalem and is excited to help students explore Kyoto.
Kyoto Faculty
Laird Harrison
Laird Harrison is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in magazines (TIME, Audubon, Reader’s Digest, People, Health), newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press); and Web sites (Reuters, Salon, MSNBC, CNN.com). He has produced video for Web sites of Smithsonian Magazine and WebMD, and audio for KQED and WUNC public media stations. He has taught journalism at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley Extension.
London Faculty Director
Ilene Prusher
Ilene Prusher is a full-time journalism instructor at Florida Atlantic University, where she is also a faculty fellow in the Peace, Justice and Human Rights Initiative. She is an award-winning journalist and author who has reported widely in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Prusher will serve as director of ieiMedia Jerusalem after having taught in the program for three summers, from 2013 to 2015. Prusher, who holds a Master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has covered some 30 countries in the course of her career as a foreign correspondent. She was a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor from 2000 to 2010, serving as the Boston-based newspaper’s bureau chief in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Jerusalem. During this time, she covered the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for “What’s a Kidney Worth”, a wide-ranging investigative story on organ trafficking. She won the United Nations Correspondents’ Association (UNCA) Award in 1998 for her coverage of Somalia. From 2013-15, Prusher was a regular contributor to TIME magazine from Jerusalem, a reporter and columnist for Haaretz, and the host of a weekly public affairs program at TLV1 Radio in Tel Aviv. Prusher’s most recent articles have been published in the New York Times Book Review, as well as The Monitor and TIME, for whom she covered the Orlando nightclub shooting. Prusher started her career as a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Moving to the Middle East in 1996, she wrote for Newsday, The New Republic, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer and the Jerusalem Report. Her book “Baghdad Fixer”, a novel about the war in Iraq, was released in November 2012 by Halban Publishers in London and Independent Publishers Group in the US in 2014. Prusher has also taught courses in international reporting and covering conflict for NYU-Tel Aviv, IDC Herzliya, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
London Faculty
Sara Ganim
Sara Ganim is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and former CNN correspondent. Ganim is a multi-platform reporter who regularly publishes in print and broadcast. She has written for newspapers, cable television, audio, and documentaries, edited newsletters and magazine pieces, and has won several of the industry’s top awards.
At age 24, she won a Pulitzer Prize for the Harrisburg Patriot-News for breaking and covering the investigation into former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of young boys. Ganim then spent seven years at CNN, covering multiple beats, including federal government agencies, the rise of the anti-fascist movement in the U.S., the NCAA, and contaminated American drinking water. In 2015, she won a Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her investigative report exposing the low reading levels of some college athletes.
Since leaving CNN, Ganim has mostly worked in audio, developing, reporting and hosting several award-winning podcasts. Her most recent project was Believable: The Coco Berthmann Story, produced by Dear Media. Believable was named one of The Atlantic’s top 25 podcasts of 2023.
In 2021, she launched a podcast with Advance Local and Meadowlark Media called The Mayor of Maple Avenue, about the intersection of trauma and addiction and societal failures in the wake of the #meToo movement. The podcast won the Keystone Award for best podcast of 2024.
Ganim also created the podcast Why Don’t We Know, which won the EWA’s public service award in 2020. In 2020, she also made her first independent film, No Defense, which garnered film festival recognition. She has consulted or reported for several other films, including the Emmy-nominated films, Deadly Haze and Paterno.
Ganim is a prior recipient of Hearst, Loyola Law School and Columbia Spencer Education fellowships. Other recognitions include the the 2020 Education Writers Association public service award, 2012 National Sexual Violence Resource Center Visionary Voice Award, 2012 APME President’s Award, 2011 George Polk award, the 2011 Scripps-Howard award, 2012 American Society of News Editors for distinguished writing, 2011 Sidney Hillman’s Sidney Award, a 2010 Golden Quill and the 2010 Bar Association journalism award, 2008 Gannet Media Foundation multimedia award.
She is currently the journalist-in-residence at the University of Florida’s Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology. She also serves as a member of the board of trustees at Lebanese American University. She is a 2008 graduate of Penn State University.
Frederick Lewis
Frederick Lewis is a Professor in the School of Media Arts & Studies at Ohio University, and a documentary filmmaker whose work has been seen on PBS stations throughout the U.S. and screened at more than 125 cultural/educational venues, including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
He teaches courses in documentary studies and scriptwriting, and is a recipient of the Presidential Teacher Award, Ohio University’s highest honor for transformative teaching, curriculum innovation and mentoring.
Professor Lewis has also taught at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Internationally he has been a Fulbright Specialist in Hungary and has taught or conducted workshops in England, Germany, France, Ukraine, Romania, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Siena Faculty Director
Angela Bradbery
Angela Bradbery is a longtime public interest communicator and university professor. She is co-author of “Public Interest Communications: Strategy for Changemakers,” published in May 2025. She practiced public interest communications for two decades in Washington, D.C. at Public Citizen. While in Washington, she also co-founded the all-volunteer organization Smokefree DC, which pushed successfully for a smokefree workplace law in the District. Prior to moving to Washington, D.C., she worked as a newspaper reporter for 10 years, covering primarily government at The Palm Beach Post, the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the Chicago Tribune. Learn more about her here.
Siena Faculty
Gina Baleria
Gina Baleria, a longtime broadcast and digital journalist and Sonoma State University professor, teaching Journalism, Media Writing, Radio & Podcasting, & Digital Media. She is also host and producer of the News in Context podcast, which airs on 102.5 KSFP in San Francisco and online. Gina is focused on cultivating intangible skills in budding journalists and professional communicators, including curiosity, empathy, tenacity, engaging with communities, and recognizing our unconscious biases. This focus led her to author The Journalism Behind Journalism: Going Beyond the Basics to Train Effective Journalists in a Shifting Landscape (Routledge 2021), a book about ethical storytelling, community engagement, and developing foundational intangible communication and journalism skills. In addition, Gina co-authored Writing & Reporting News for the 21st Century (Cognella, 2018), winner of the 2020 Textbook Award from the Broadcast Education Association (BEA). Her research and creative interests revolve around news and digital media literacy, podcasting, and digital engagement and communication across socially salient differences. Prior to becoming a professor, Gina was an award-winning broadcast and digital journalist at stations including KCBS Radio, KGO TV and KGO Radio in San Francisco; KXTV and KFBK in Sacramento; and KCAL in Los Angeles. She also helped create and manage a digital newsroom at the nonpartisan nonprofit governance organization, California Forward. As an American with Italian heritage, Gina speaks Italian and lives in San Francisco.