Sara
Garcia Santamaria

Sara García Santamaría is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). She holds a Doctorate in Journalism Studies from University of Sheffield (UK). Having completed her PhD, she became a research fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, leading a Joint Digital Rights and Internet Freedom Research & Advocacy Project. Dr García Santamaría’s line of work focuses on two strands of research. On the one hand, she works on Media Studies, looking at Journalism in restrictive contexts and the safety of journalists, with a special focus in Latin America (and Cuba). On the other hand, she works on Political Communication, exploring populism as performance on social media, including the construction of caring ecologies through politicians’ intimate posts. Her projects have received research grants from La Caixa Foundation, the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Sheffield), the David Nicholls Memorial Trust for Caribbean Studies (Oxford University), the Institute of Latin American Studies (University of London), and the Society for Latin American Studies (UK). Sara is vice-chair of the Political Communication Section at the International Association for Media and Communication (IAMCR) and member of the research groups Mediaccions, Media Flows, Discourse.net, and the Varieties of Democracy project. She has recently co-edited the books Cuba’s Digital Revolution: Citizen Innovation and State Policy (University of Florida Press, 2021) and Media and Governance in Latin Amercia: Towards a Plurality of Voices (Peter Lang, 2020). She has also a range of publications in international books and academic journals, including the Media and Communication, Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, Tripodos, Journal of Latin American Communication Research, or Persona & Sociedad. She is a regular contributor of Al-Jazeera English and often collaborates with national and international media outlets.