Media representation
Postcolonial studies
Collective memory and international news
Critical discourse analysis
Ethnography and interviews

Elke Mahieu is a doctoral researcher at the CIMS and CJS. She acquired a Masters degree in Communication Sciences in 2016 at the University of Ghent. Her thesis received a great distinction for her critical discourse analysis of the representations of 'Africa' in Belgian ‘alternative’ news. She worked as a researcher for multiple (inter)national media companies, such as VRT, and as a freelance journalist and translator for media such as De Groene Amsterdammer and De Tijd. In 2017, she started her Ph.D. research, funded by the BOF. Based on mixed qualitative field research of eight months in Kinshasa (DRC), she is studying geo/political power navigations of Congolese journalists across off- and online media. This project is supervised by prof. dr. Stijn Joye (UGent), Prof. Dr. Marie-Soleil Frère (ULB), and Dr. Marie Fierens (ULB). Since 2022, she has been affiliated as a co-organizer and programmer with the research journalism association VVOJ. As a university lecturer, she is currently teaching Communication Science at the UCLouvain and previously taught Journalism Studies at the VUB.

 A full list of publications can be consulted here: Elke Mahieu

Research Projects

Global power relations in local media production in the context of Kinshasa (DRC)