Welcoming the 2022–24 CPD Research Fellows

The Center is pleased to announce the addition of three new CPD Research Fellows: Dmitry Chernobrov of the University of Sheffield, Alina Dolea of Bournemouth University and Kyle Long of Northwestern University.

CPD Research Fellows are selected from a competitive pool of international applicants from around the world and each oversees a substantive research project that yields at least two outputs, including one paper published by CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy. The second output may consist of a series for the CPD Blog or another type of publication the Fellow develops with CPD.

Dmitry Chernobrov is Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in media and international politics at the Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield. He is also Co-Director of the Digital Society Network and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Chernobrov is author of Public Perception of International Crises, which received the 2019 Furniss Book Award for an “exceptional contribution to the study of international security.” His work focuses on international crises and public opinion, public diplomacy and contested international events, diasporas and memory, and digital technology and participatory war. His research has been published in International Affairs, Political Psychology, Digital Journalism, BJPIR, Politics and other leading academic journals. Chernobrov has received research funding from the British Academy, Fulbright, the Scottish Funding Council and USC Institute of Armenian Studies.

Chernobrov’s 2022–24 CPD Research Fellowship project is titled, "Strategic Humor and Post-Truth Public Diplomacy."

Alina Dolea is Principal Academic in Media, Communication and Politics at Bournemouth University, UK. Her research is situated at the intersection of public diplomacy, migration, media and communication studies, with a focus on discourse. She has authored several articles and book chapters developing a discursive approach for the study of public diplomacy, as well as the monograph Twenty Years of (Re)branding Post-Communist Romania. Actors, discourses, perspectives - 1990–2010 (Institutul European, 2015). A list of her recent publications is available here. She is particularly interested in the role non-state actors have come to play in public diplomacy, reproducing, but also contesting and disrupting the state’s strategic communication. She is currently focusing on diasporas and emotions, exploring the opportunities as well as the consequences of their transnational existence for public diplomacy. Dolea was Fulbright Senior Scholar 2015–2016 at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (U.S.) and SCIEX Postdoc Visiting Scholar 2015 at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). She is the recipient of the 2015 Ph.D. Award for Excellent Doctoral Theses from the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA) for her Ph.D. thesis “Country promotion as a public issue in Romania after 1989 – A social constructivist and interdisciplinary approach.”

Dolea’s 2022–24 CPD Research Fellowship project is "Diaspora diplomacy, emotions and disruption," which will explore how diaspora has been legitimized as a transnational actor in its own right in public diplomacy.

Kyle Long is an administrator at Northwestern University and a scholar of international education and public diplomacy. He teaches a graduate-level course on the intersection of these fields at the George Washington University. Long’s research focuses on overseas American universities and foreign interference in higher education. His writing has appeared in International Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed and Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. He is currently editing a special issue on foreign interference for the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education. He is presently a Fulbright Specialist (2021–25) and formerly a Boren Fellow (2016–17). Long serves as Vice President of the American University of Iraq Foundation, a U.S. tax-exempt charitable organization that supports liberal arts education in Iraq. He is an active member of the Public Diplomacy Council. Among his prior appointments are UNESCO Co-Chair of International Education for Development at George Washington University, Director of Higher Education Research for Hanover Research, and inaugural Director of the U.S. Office for the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. Long earned a Ph.D. in International and Comparative Education from Columbia University.

About CPD Research Fellows

Since 2009, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy Research Fellowship has supported and publicized the work of scholars and practitioners of public diplomacy. Each year, the Center selects three non-resident fellows, each serving a two-year term. All CPD Research Fellows can be viewed as part of our network here.