School of Communications Research Centre

The Centre for Society, Information and Media, based in the School, has undertaken major research projects on various aspects of media production, policy and reception.

Dr. Debbie Ging

The centre for Society Information and Media (SIM) was established in 2005 to coordinate, support and promote a wide range of research initiatives in all aspects of print, audiovisual and digital media.

SIM is situated in the School of Communications yet has a strongly interdisciplinary and international outlook. Its members are academic staff, research associates, practitioners and postgraduate researchers actively engaged in collaborative projects and/or with shared interests in developing further such projects. Dr. Debbie Ging is the current Director of SIM.  

SIM has built upon the successes of previous research initiatives in DCU such as STeM and COMTEC to become the national leader in communications and media research. Its researchers are concerned with all aspects - economic, social, cultural, political and technological - of mediated communication in a globalising world, and employ a wide range of approaches including those of policy studies, reception analysis, cultural studies, political economy, history and textual studies.

SIM also supports collaborative media production and practice projects, including the authoring/design of new media objects and digital media applications for teaching and learning. The SIM centre enables a number of dedicated research clusters to pool methodological expertise and resources with a view to growing larger interdisciplinary and transnational projects. SIM members have relations with CELSIUS, the Centre for International Studies (CIS), the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies (CTTS), the Centre for Consumption Studies (CCS) and the DCU Migration and Interculturalism Research Cluster (MIRC).

SIM's current research clusters are:

• International Media, Interculturalism and Migration
• Digital Games / New Media and Education
• Science and Environmental Communication
• Journalism in the Digital Age

SIM's core objectives are:

• To support and produce high-impact, inter-disciplinary research with a strong international focus
• To attract and support top-quality doctoral and postdoctoral students
• To develop teams of expertise in cutting-edge areas with a view to participating in international networks
• To secure external funding for research projects which have a tangible impact on policy across a range of sectors (educational, broadcasting, intercultural, NGOs, etc.)
• To provide researchers with possibilities for international exchange and to facilitate research visits to Ireland

If you are interested in learning more about the SIM project please visit the SIM site

Representing Women Project

Members of the School are involved in Representing Women Project. The Representing Women involves a team from three research centres at DCU. It draws on the expertise of three Research Centres in the areas of Linguistics, Political Science and Communication Studies located in The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at DCU to investigate the gender dynamic operating within Irish parliamentary democracy; specifically the representation, role(s) and performance of women politicians in Dáil Éireann. The project will make a significant contribution not only to Irish national politics but will also advance the development of both a European and international comparative research framework.

Power, Trust and Ethics

In June 2005, the School of Communications co-hosted with School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology, the first all-Ireland media research conference under the title, Power, Trust and Ethics. The conference heard presentations by academic staff and postgraduate students from DCU, DIT, University of Limerick, University of Ulster, Trinity College Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology. Visitors from abroad included Professor Robert Savage, Boston College, and the keynote speaker, Professor James Curran, Goldsmiths College, London.