ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Professor Shani Orgad

Professor Shani Orgad

Professor of Media and Communications

Department of Media and Communications

Room No
Room PEL.7.01H
Office Hours
By appointment on Student Hub
Languages
English
Key Expertise
gender and media

About me

Please note Professor Orgad will be on research leave during the 2024/25 academic year. See .

Shani Orgad is Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. 

Professor Orgad’s research interests include gender, feminism, and media; representations, inequality and contemporary culture, representations of suffering and migration, new media, narrative and media, media and everyday life, media and globalisation, and ethnographic research methods. 

Professor Orgad gained a bachelor’s degree in Media and Communications with Sociology and Anthropology from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, following which she obtained both a Master's and PhD in Media and Communications at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.  

Professor Orgad has won numerous teaching awards including a 2019 ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Teaching Excellence Prize, a 2018 ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Excellence in Education Award, as well as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Innovator Award. 

Expertise Details

Gender; feminism and media; motherhood; globalisation; media representations; narrative; ethnographic research methods

Research

Professor Orgad is currently completing a book entitled ‘The Confidence Culture’ (with Professor Rosalind Gill), which is due for publication by Duke University Press in 2020. The book examines the extraordinary rise of female self-esteem in current culture in and across media, forms, and discourses.

Professor Orgad's recent research examines public discourses about gender equality in the workplace and media representations of women and work. Professor Orgad has recently completed a study that examines the experiences of women who left paid employment in the context of becoming mothers, and juxtaposes their experiences against the way they are represented in the media and public discourse. The study, which involved interviews with women who left paid employment and their partners, and analysis of media and policy representations gender, work and family, is published in the book  (2019, Columbia University Press). Read reviews of the book in the , , and .

Professor Orgad's other research interest concerns the significance of media representations for people's understanding of themselves, of one another, and the world. She is particularly interested in how new media enable people to present and understand themselves and how their personal narratives and representations interact, reflect and challenge larger public narratives and images. These issues are explored in her book  (2012, Polity). The book examines how transformations in the contemporary media landscape, specifically the expansion of new media, the increasing global scope of communication, and the blurring between public and private realms, change and shape the ways in which issues of public concern are framed, imaged, and constructed, and what consequences this may have.

Professor Orgad's other interests include representations of suffering, new media, the Internet and computer-mediated communication, narrative and media, media and everyday life, media and globalisation, and ethnographic research methods.

Professor Orgad completed (with Professor Bruna Seu, Birkbeck College) the research project 'Mediated Humanitarian Knowledge: Audiences' Reactions and Moral Actions', funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The project explored public understanding and reactions to humanitarian communications, including campaigns about international development issues and humanitarian appeals. Professor Orgad and Professor Seu conducted focus groups across the UK to learn how people make sense of the images and narratives of distant suffering and how ideologies, emotions and biographical experiences shape those responses. They also interviewed professionals from ten UK-based international NGOs to explore how they think about and produce their communications. The study’s findings are published in  (2017, Palgrave).

Professor Orgad's previous research focused on the online participation of breast cancer patients in Internet spaces. While much has been debated about the significance of the Internet, the actual processes of communication in which people engage online are as yet little understood. Exploring the ways in which participants in online spaces configure their experience into a story, her study offered an innovative way of understanding online communication as a socially significant activity. It is based on e-mail and face-to-face interviews with breast cancer patients, as well as an analysis of breast cancer related websites. The substantive focus of storytelling online is analysed in its specificity as a social phenomenon. At the same time it is connected to a broad range of debates on communication and Internet, health and illness and social agency. Professor Orgad has written about this in her book (2005, Peter Lang).

Another interest of Professor Orgad's is ethnographic research methods and qualitative methods of Internet research. She wrote about this in chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (edited by Mansell et al, 2007) Virtual Methods (edited by Hine, Berg, 2005) and Internet Inquiry: A Dialogue Among Qualitative Researchers (edited by Markham & Baym, Sage, 2008), and in a review of the book "Online Social Research" in New Media & Society (February 2005). 

Publications

Books

  • Gill, R. and Orgad, S. (2022). Confidence Culture. London: Duke Press. ISBN: 9781478014539. 
    See articles about the book in ,  , and .  

  • Orgad, S. (2019) Heading home: Motherhood, work and the failed promise of equality. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN  9780231184724.  

  • Seu, I.B and Orgad, S., eds. (2017) Caring in crisis? Humanitarianism, the public and NGOs. Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK. ISBN 9783319502588. 

  • Orgad, S. (2012) Media representation and the global imagination. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9780745643793 

  • Orgad, S. (2005) Storytelling online: Talking breast cancer on the internet. Peter Lang, New York, US. ISBN 0820476293.

Other publications

Teaching and supervision

Postgraduate teaching

Professor Orgad teaches the popular postgraduate course Representation in the Age of Globalisation (MC416) and co-teaches on the core course Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications (MC408).  

Professor Orgad has won numerous awards for her teaching, including won numerous teaching awards including 2019 ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Teaching Excellence Prize, 2018 ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Excellence in Education Award as well as the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Innovator Award.  

Doctoral supervision

Professor Orgad supervises doctoral researchers and welcomes applications from prospective students relating to her areas of research. Her current doctoral supervisees include Paula Kiel, Winnie M. Li, Gal Ravia and Sarah Learmonth.    

To date, she has supervised to successful completion eight PhD students.    

Public engagement

Public Talks

  • ‘The Others are coming’: Media representations of migration. Centre for Citizenship Education, Warsaw, Poland. 23 February 2022.

  • Heading Home: Fantasies and Injuries of Motherhood and Work. CISC, University of Essex. 9 March 2022.

  • Confidence Culture (with Rosalind Gill). Keynote to Education and Standards Directorate, General Medical Council. 17 May 2022. 

  • Confidence Culture (with Rosalind Gill). Keynote at the Women in Games annual conference. 19 May 2022.  

  • Global imagination and the media. Keynote to People in Need journalist training programme, Slovakia. 27 June 2022.

  • Confidence Culture. Keynote ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Power annual conference. 28 June 2022. 

Selected recent media interviews and book coverage  

  • ‘It is the workplace, not women’s confidence, that needs to be fixed’. Financial times. 16 January 2022.   
  • ‘Is confidence a cult? These sociologists think so.’ Vox. 18 January 2022.  
  •   
  • ‘Is Confidence the Secret to Success? Not Exactly.’ New York Times. 7 February 2022.   
  • The confidence con — have you fallen for the self-esteem myth?’. Times. 3 March 2022.   
  • "Confidence culture": comment le culte de la confiance en soi peut piéger les femmes. L’Express. 19 March 2022.  
  •   
  • El Pais. Unpacking the myth of self-esteem: ‘Our relationship with brands is toxic. They tell you to love yourself, but they sell you something unreachable.’ 24 April 2022.   
  • "Es geht immer nur darum, dass Frauen sich ändern sollen". Zeit Online. 18 April 2022.   
  • ‘The cult of confidence: could positive thinking be making us feel less secure?’. Observer. 10 July 2022.  
  •    

Selected recent blogs and op-eds  

  • Orgad, S. and Gill, R. (7 March 2022). ‘How confidence became a cult’. The Atlantic. Available at:     
  • Orgad, S. and Gill, R.  (8 March 2022). ‘Against systemic gender injustice, our confidence culture encourages women to blame themselves’. ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Business Review. Available at:   
  • Gill, R.  and Orgad, S. (14 February 2022) ‘Confidence culture tells women to be more self-assured – but ignores the real problems.’ The Conversation. Available at:   

Recent podcasts 

  • WAMC Podcasts: ‘#1708: Shani Orgad, Rosalind Gill on “Confidence Culture” | 51%’. 7 April 2022.   
  • Top Rank: ‘The Confidence Cult’. 6 April 2022.  
  •   
  • ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IQ Podcast: ‘Can mothers do it all? 8 February 2022.    
  • New Book Network: ‘Confidence Culture’. 21 January 2022.  .   
  • Scoot Over: ‘Body Positivity; Commercialized or Commandeered?’. 20 September 2021, .