Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Director of Research, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
Dr Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director of Research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford, and serves as Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Press/Politics.

His work focuses on changes in the news media, political communication, and the role of digital technologies in both. He has done extensive research on American politics, journalism, and various forms of activism, and a significant amount of comparative work in Western Europe and beyond.

Recent books include The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implications for Democracy (2010, edited with David Levy), Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns (2012), and Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective (2014, edited with Raymond Kuhn).

In 2014, he won the Doris Graber Award for best book on political communication published in the last ten years, awarded by the American Political Science Association, for his Ground Wars. He is also recipient of the 2014 Tietgen Prize for his work on current changes in the news media.

He holds a BA and a MSc in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, a MA (with distinction) in Political Theory from the University of Essex, and a PhD (with distinction) in Communications from Columbia University.

Most of his research is broadly concerned with the intersection between old organizations and new technologies, and in particular with the various forms of civic engagement and popular participation that emerge and are enabled there and the institutions and institutional preconditions that underpin them and make them possible.

Dr Nielsen has taught courses on political communication, news media, and journalism at Oxford, and previously courses on European politics and international relations at Columbia University, the University of Copenhagen, and Roskilde University.

In 2018, He served as a member of the European Commission's High Level Group on "fake news" and online disinformation.