For more than 20 years, Professor Georgiou has been researching media and communications’ role in constructing meanings of identity and citizenship. Her current research has three distinct but interconnected strands. The first strand examines the synergetic relation between media and the city and the ways in which their close interconnection organises and regulates urban publics and communities. The second strand examines media’s role in identity construction, especially among diasporic populations and migrants. The third strand explores the ways in which diversity is represented in the media and the consequences that these representations have for the European ethical and political space.
These strands are explored in a series of recent and current research projects. Among those, her most recent monograph, Being Human in Digital Cities (Polity, 2023), explores the manifestations and contestations of the digital order in cities, through competing claims to urban humanity by different actors – from the Big Tech to dwellers of cities. Before that, her co-authored book, The Digital Border (with L. Chouliaraki, NYU Press, 2022), brought together research conducted over five years across Europe; this project explores the technological and symbolic construction of borders and politics of racial assortment of humanities, separating those who have the right to dignity and rights from those who don’t. Georgiou’s commitment to investigating the ethics and politics of migration is also expressed in a series of projects (e.g. with young urban refugees in Europe; and with Ukrainian refugees at the Polish/Ukrainian border) that bring to the foreground of her research the voices and experiences of migrants.
Current and recent research projects
- (2020-23) ySkills - Youth Skills. EU Horizon (ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ team)
- (2017-19) Resilient Communities, Resilient Cties? Digital Makings of the City of Refuge. Rockefellar Foundation. (Principal Investigator)
- (2017-18) Communicating the Digital City. Leverhulme Trust International Academic Fellowship. (Principal Investigator)
- (2016-18) Social Media and Identity from the Perspective of Diasporic LGBTQs. European Commission Horizon 2020 Marie-Curie European Fellowship Research Fellow: Lukasz Szulc (Principal Investigator)
- (2016-19) Alevi Television and the Making of Transnational Alevi Identity. The Royal Society Newton International Fellowship (UK Academic; PI: Cetin Berfin)
- (2013-2015) Marie Curie Inter-European Fellowship: (UPLOAD) Upload. Urban Politics of London Youngsters Analyzed Digitally, Research Fellow: Keun Leurs (Principal Investigator)
- (2013-2014) Community through digital connectivity? Communication infrastructure in multicultural London. ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Seed Fund. (PI)
- (2008-2011) Media and Citizenship: Transnational Television Cultures Reshaping Political Identities in the European Union; European Commission FP7 (Partner, leading research in the UK, Spain, Cyprus)
- (2007-2008) International Networks Collaboration Mediated Networks: Engendered Diaspora and Global Citizenship (funded by the World Universities Network and the University of Leeds)
- (2007-2009) Representation of Minorities in the European Press - UK Team leader. EU Fundamental Rights Agency