Karen Ross is Emerita Professor of Gender and Politics in the School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University, UK. Over the past 30+ years, she has researched and taught on the broad topic of gender and media. Whilst much of her published work has focused on the salience of gender in political communication, she has also researched and written about general trends in gender and news. Most recently, her research projects have included women’s voices on menopause, how women media professionals have experienced gendered ageism, and Indian women’s entrepreneurship. She has held positions as Visiting Professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Massey University and the Centre for Advancement of Women in Politics at Queens University Belfast.
Karen has authored and co-authored numerous books, edited collections, journal articles and other publications – see her CV including a list of publications here. Earlier research work included several studies for public and private broadcasters, focused on both audiences and representation which included the development of multimedia training materials – see CV. She has also developed training materials relating to equality and diversity issues in higher education, and has recently been exploring the use of film in disseminating research, research as practice. This latter interest has resulted in a series of short films documenting women’s experiences of living and working in informal communities in Delhi, as well as an animated film and (filmed) stage play around women’s experiences of menopause. Click on ‘multimedia projects’ to view these films on Karen’s YouTube channel. While she’s pretty good at a few things, Karen does not profess to be an expert filmmaker but instead, uses her iphone as a research tool. Her first effort in filmmaking was in 2011 when she worked with the New Zealand Labour Party to film some of their MPs as they went out and about canvassing and participanted in election debates and hustings, including Jacinda Ardern who obviously went on to rather bigger things. Click on ‘multimedia’ to see some of these films. In 2013 she completed the first significant analysis of gender, decision-making and representation in major media houses across the EU, funded by the European Institute for Gender Research, see here for published report. She was the European Coordinator of the Global Media Monitoring Project between 2009 and 2025, and was the Coordinator of the UK and Republic of Ireland GMMP team over the same period until she handed over the GMMP baton to some brilliant colleagues. In 2017-2019, she led a European consortium on an EU-funded project looking at advancing gender equality in the media (AGEMI) which turned into an important website which currently hosts a large number of resources for teaching and training around gender and media, all of which are free to access and use. Check out AGEMI’s resources here.
Karen was a member of REF2014 sub-panel 36 and of REF2020 sub-panel 34 and is currently working with several UK universities in an advisory capacity in advance of REF2029, as well as with international universities who have their own versions of the Research Excellence Framework for assessing the quality of their research. She is a reviewer for Horizon Europe and has been been involved in reviewing proposals for a number of EU calls as well as for a number of national research councils.
On a personal level, her favourite colour is black, her favourite food is Lindor butterscotch truffles and her favourite people are her fab twin sister, Elizabeth, her equally wonderful daughters Jo and Liz, her gorgous granddaughters Niamh and Seraphina and her dog, Frida the GSP.
Karen Ross 