Rock Ethics Institute

Biography

Yael Warshel is assistant professor of telecommunications and media industries, Rock Ethics Institute research associate, and affiliated faculty of international affairs, education, African studies, and Middle Eastern studies. She works at the intersection of international media, child, and conflict analysis, practice, and policy specializing in the concept of “peace communication” she pioneered. Dr. Warshel is fluent in and/or has studied five languages and conducted fieldwork in the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and Latin America. At Penn State, Dr. Warshel co-leads the institute’s Human Rights and Forced-Migration initiative and leads its Children, Youth, and Media in International and Global Conflict Zones initiative, for which she is founding director of the Children, Media and Conflict Zones Lab.

Dr. Warshel is recipient of three top dissertation awards for her research about peace communication, including one in peace studies and two in global and international communication. She also earned several more awards in journalism, public service, and Middle Eastern and African studies.

Dr. Warshel’s current field-based project explores human and communication rights of stateless and forcibly-migrated and –sedentarized conflict zone populations through her interpretations of North West African youth's global uses of media. She is author of Experiencing the Israeli Palestinian Conflict: Children, Peace Communication and Socialization (Cambridge University Press), which critically determines the efficacy of peace communication interventions in managing political conflicts, using as its case her multi-year reception study of peacebuilding versions of Israeli and Palestinian Sesame Street. The TEDx talk about it is here. She is co-editor with Elihu Katz of the political communication book Election Studies: What’s Their Use?, and continues to research comparative determinants of international coverage of conflicts, per contrast between frames and agendas set, and numbers and magnitude of conflicts.

Dr. Warshel earned her Ph.D. and MA in communication from UC San Diego and the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the American Institute for Maghrib Studies board, previously worked as assistant professor of international communication at American University, and for UNESCO, the Center for International Development and Conflict Management, and the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace.