Selina Mudavanhu

Associate Professor, Communication Studies & Media Arts

Selina Mudavanhu is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University. She holds a PhD in Media Studies from the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. Selina’s research interests are in critical media studies, critical race studies, decolonial studies, (social) media and the politics of representation and framing, media audiences and digital storytelling. Her current research focuses on understanding the ways those with power constitute meanings around race and other intersecting identities in mainstream media and social media texts. A large portion of this research examines the likely implications of the dominant constructions on the lives of ordinary people. Selina’s research also prioritizes the voices of the ‘subaltern.’ Selina is interested in the manner ordinary people speak back to power, articulate their experiences and create alternative meanings on social media platforms and through methodologies such as digital storytelling. She has received grants to convene digital storytelling projects from the Ontario Council on Articulation and Transfer, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (with Dr. Kezia Batisai, Sociology Department, University of Johannesburg, South Africa), Petro-Canada-McMaster University Young Innovator Award and the McMaster Art’s Research Board Award.