Dr. 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.), as well as 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 is one of the founders of the Public Diplomacy Interest Group within the International Communication Association, serving as Chair for 2020-2022.

Dr. 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.