Position:
Interest and Bio:
Becky Lentz is an Assistant Professor in Media and Communications in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, specializing in the area of media and public policy. Prof. Lentz was most recently The Ford Foundation's first program officer for electronic media policy from 2001 to 2007. During her tenure at Ford, she awarded more than $30 million to the emerging field of media reform and justice in the U.S. She funded research examining the role of communications and media studies scholarship in public policy formation, among numerous other topics. Additional grants supported issue advocacy on a variety of topics that included media diversity and representation, corporate influence on federal regulation, media consolidation, electronic privacy, community radio, and Internet governance. She was also instrumental in the evolution of new funding streams concerning intellectual property and freedom of expression.
Research and teaching interests include critical and comparative perspectives on communications regulation; discourse and social change; the role of philanthropy and NGOs in the field of information, communication, and technology (ICT) policy; theory-building on frameworks for media governance and regulation; and civil society engagement in global governance of ICT policy.
PhD University of Texas at Austin (College of Communications Department of Radio-TV-Film)
MA Southern Illinois University (Applied Linguistics)
Publications:
Prof. Lentz has published in such journals as The Information Society, Telecommunications Policy, and Info on a range of topics that include rural telecommunications and economic development, engaged scholarship in the communications policy field, and critique of digital divide policy discourse. Prof. Lentz has also presented at annual conferences of the International Communications Association (ICA), the International Association of Media and Communications Researchers (IAMCR), Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC), and the Association of American Geographers (AAG).
Faculty page:
http://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/faculty/lentz/