Barbara Thomaß

Prof. Dr Barbara Thomaß was a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research │ Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) in the project “European Media Platforms: Assessing Positive and Negative Externalities for European Culture (EuMePlat)” from 2021 to 2024. Her work focuses on international communication, the politics and economics of media and communication, and media systems in Western and Eastern Europe. She has worked on issues of European media policy, media ethics and journalistic ethics as well as on media development cooperation and media in democratization and transformation processes.

From 2003 to 2020, Prof. Dr. Barbara Thomaß held the professorship for “Media Systems in International Comparison” at the Institute for Media Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. There she is still co-director of the research training group “MEDAS21 Media Development Assistance in the 21st Century”. Barbara Thomaß is second deputy chairwoman of the ZDF board of directors and chairwoman of the board of the Akademie für Publizistik in Hamburg. She is a member of the European Media Research Group as well as a member of the expert committee of Deutsche Welthungerhilfe.

Barbara Thomaß studied journalism, political science and economics in Berlin and Grenoble and received her doctorate from Universität Hamburg in 1998. Since 1995, she has taught at the universities of Hamburg, Lüneburg, Bremen, Göttingen and as a guest lecturer at the Nouvelle Sorbonne in Paris, the University of Vienna and Mc Gill University in Montreal. She has also worked as a lecturer in international journalism training.

Before her academic career, she completed a newspaper traineeship and worked as a journalist for several years.