Call for Candidates - S&WG Head elections 2022

Rural Communication Working Group

The Rural Communication Working Group (RUC) will be holding elections for two co-chair positions, for the term 2022 - 2026.

The elections will be held online from 20 May until 5 July using the SurveyMonkey platform.

Eligible members of IAMCR and of the RUC working group, are able to stand for a position and to vote. To verify if you are a member of the RUC working group, log in to your IAMCR account and select “My Sections and Working Groups” from the menu.

Interested candidates must send their name, institutional position, a statement of no more than 500 words and a photograph to elections [at] iamcr.org with a copy to the SWG elections coordinator Andrea Medrado (A.Medrado [at] westminster.ac.uk) and to the RUC Working Group’s current officers, Sarah Cardey (s.p.cardey [at] reading.ac.uk) and Rico Lie (rico.lie [at] wur.nl), no later than 29 April.

You can find the election rules at: https://iamcr.org/governance/swg-rules

Read about Rural Communication Working Group

Candidates

Statements

Sarah Cardey (University of Reading, UK)

We started the Working Group on Rural Communication four years ago, with colleagues at IAMCR who wanted a space to investigate communication in rural settings. We understood that there are dynamics that are different from rural areas, and communication for pro-social change needs to understand and work with these different realities to be successful. The last two years have been more challenging, with the pandemic moving the RUC work online, but there has still been space for interesting engagement and conversations to continue. I think that we have been successful in meeting the mandate we started the RUC with four years ago and would like to continue to support and grow the working group. As such, I would like to continue as co-head of the working group. In the next mandate, I would like to work on building the knowledge base of the working group, looking at external engagement to bring in greater opportunities for the Working Group and IAMCR members, and return to our in-person activities. 

I am a social scientist working in development communication, particularly looking at gender and marginalized communities and voices in rural communication, extension systems, rural innovation, and participatory research. I have worked as a researcher, educator and consultant across sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and Asia. I work at the University of Reading, as Associate Professor in the School of Agriculture, Policy, and Development, where I am the director of the Graduate Institute for International Development, Agriculture and Economics, and programme director for the MSc Communication for Development and the MSc Applied Developments Studies. I also support IAMCR through my membership on the Publications Committee.

Rico Lie (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)

Assistant Professor Communication for Development and Intercultural Learning
Wageningen University & Research, Center for Integrative Development
Section Communication, Philosophy and Technology
Research group Knowledge, Technology and Innovation
Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands
Email: rico.lie [at] wur.nl

The Working Group Rural Communication was established four years ago and has successfully attracted members and a steady number of papers, leading to different engaging sessions at past IAMCR conferences. Although it has been a challenge to cope with mainly online interactions in the past two years, I think that we managed to keep the topic of rural communication on the agenda, and I am optimistic about the future. Therefore, I would like to continue as (co-)head of the working group. In a new term, we could try to expand our membership, and besides organizing WG-related in-between activities, the main task will be the organization of the reviews of the submitted abstracts and building the program for the annual conferences.

I am a social anthropologist working at the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation research group at Wageningen University in The Netherlands. I previously worked at the University of Brussels in Belgium and the Universities of Nijmegen and Leiden in The Netherlands. At Wageningen University, I am an assistant professor in international communication interested in development communication and intercultural communication. 

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