Melissa Aronczyk

Author & Professor, Rutgers University

Melissa Aronczyk is an Associate Professor of Media Studies in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University. She is the co-author, with Maria Espinoza, of A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of Environmentalism (Oxford University Press, 2022). Her research on how PR affects our ability to communicate about climate change has been featured in The Nation, the Financial Times, Rolling Stone, CNBC, The Intercept, Grist, AdWeek, and Yes Magazine. She has also written stories about PR and sustainability for The Washington Post and Foreign Policy magazine. At Rutgers, Prof. Aronczyk is a Faculty Associate with the Eagleton Institute of Politics and Affiliated Graduate Faculty with the Department of Sociology. With Jeff Lane, she co-hosts the Digital Ethnography Working Group at Rutgers. She is also a Faculty Fellow with the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and a Research Affiliate with the Center on Digital Culture & Society at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication (@canjcomm) and editorial board member for the International Journal of Cultural Studies; the International Journal of Communication; and Advertising & Society Quarterly. She holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University.