Dr. Shalini Venturelli is Associate Professor of International Communication Policy at the American University, Washington, D.C. She is also Chair of the internationally constituted Communication & Human Rights Committee of the International Association of Media & Communication Research (IAMCR), the largest international association of scholars and scientists in communication research, and serves on the association's governance board, the International Council of the IAMCR. She serves on the Editorial Board of a number of scholarly journals in international communication research and as expert advisor on cultural and social aspects of the Information Society for international organizations.
Dr. Venturelli is among the first scholars internationally to examine, at the international/global level, the social and cultural development of the Information Society and the Internet. Since 1993, she has conducted studies and published her research on the social, cultural, political and economic challenges of Global Internet development, and has delivered lectures, reports and recommendations for policy to international organizations and governments. Her research examines the emerging international policy framework for the Internet and the Global Information Society, including: policies for knowledge development, free expression rights, cultural policy and cultural rights, poverty and information technology, human rights, content regulation, intellectual property rights, telecommunications liberalization, universal service and access, competition policy, conflicts over legal and regulatory traditions, and information economics.
Dr. Venturelli is the author of many publications on the Information Society. She has examined the socio-legal and political constitution of the public sphere in cyberspace, especially with respect to designing policy conditions that promote participation in information, knowledge, and creativity, cultural self-determination, and freedom of expression. Her study of the political and cultural reconstitution of public space in the European Union based on examination of audiovisual policy, intellectual property, telecommunications liberalization, and human rights of free expression was recently published by Oxford University Press. Entitled Liberalizing the European Media: Politics, Regulation and the Public Sphere, the book documents the political, cultural, and constitutional development of the Information Society in the European context.
Dr. Venturelli has conducted comparative studies of cyberspace policy and E-regulation in Europe, Asia and North America, providing an analysis that addresses the cultural, social, and legal barriers that must be overcome in order to develop common international regulatory standards for the social development of the Internet. She advises a number of international organizations on Internet Policy for developing countries, and is regularly invited to speak in different parts of the world on what steps each nation must undertake to exploit the full cultural and social potential of the Internet.
Professor Venturelli is also currently working on her next book, which examines the regulatory and political design of the Global Internet. Entitled Communication Rights in Cyberspace, the study examines four classes of information rights in the internationalization of cyberspace, including access rights, rights of cultural self-determination, rights of ownership of expression, and political-social rights of expression and participation.
Selected list of publications by Prof. Shalini Venturelli:
· Liberalizing the European Media: Politics, Regulation & the Public Sphere from Oxford University Press.
· "Building Knowledge Societies in Underdeveloped Regions and Communities: Diagnosis and Strategies," forthcoming Report from UNESCO.
· "A Civil Society Approach to the Information Society in Developing Countries: Redesigning the Policy Framework," forthcoming Report from UNESCO.
· "Inventing E-Regulation in East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the United States: Conflicting Visions of Cyberspace," Telematics & Informatics: An International Journal on Telecommunications & Information Technology
· From the Information Economy to the Creative Economy, monograph from the Center for Arts & Culture
· "Ownership of Cultural Expression: The Place of Free Speech & Culture in the New Intellectual Property Rights Regime of the European Union," Telematics & Informatics: An International Journal on Telecommunications & Information Technology, Special Issue:The Socio-Cultural Consequences of the European Information Society]
· "Information Society and Multilateral Agreements: Obstacles for Developing Countries." Media Development, Special Issue: Key Issues in Global Communications
· "Cultural Rights and World Trade Agreements," Gazette: International Journal for Communication Studies
· "Freedom of Communication in the Information Society: Frameworks, Standards & Obstacles," Special on Human Rights, Journal of International Communication
· "Prospects for Human Rights in the Political and Regulatory Design of the Information Society," in Media and Politics in Transition
· "The Information Society in Europe: Passing of the Public Service Paradigm of European Democracy," in Europe's Ambiguous Unity: Conflict and Consensus in the Post-Maastricht Era
· "Information Liberalization in the European Union: Conflicting Models of State and Society," in Information Infrastructure Initiatives: Vision and Policy Design
· "Global Media Policy and the Restructuring of International Relations," News Media and Foreign Relations.
Background: Prof. Venturelli received a Ph.D. in international communication policy from the University of Colorado at Boulder, an M.A. in political science from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in economics from Illinois State University.
Contact: International Communication Division, School of International Service, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW. Washington, DC 20016, USA.
Phone: 202-885-1635, Fax: 202-885-2494, Email: sventur@american.edu