Dalia Elsheikh

Dr. Dalia Elsheikh is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Bournemouth University’s Faculty of Media and Communication. She holds a PhD in Political Communication (2017) from the same institution and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research focuses on political communication in transitional democracies, with particular emphasis on Egypt’s public sphere, campaign professionalism, and media reform. She has over 16 years of journalism experience and is a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), serving as its representative from 2009–2019.

Her work explores how campaign professionalism impacts citizen engagement in nascent democracies, as exemplified in her monograph Campaign Professionalism during Egypt’s 2012 Presidential Election (2018). She is currently investigating the role of cultural movements in Egypt’s democratization process and has published extensively on digital media’s influence on political discourse, including studies on Clubhouse’s proto-public sphere during the pandemic and metrics-driven journalism.

Key research areas include: political communication in authoritarian contexts, social media activism, media reforms in transitional societies, and the interplay between journalism and democratization. Her recent articles highlight Egypt’s media landscape challenges, pandemic governance rhetoric, and the transformative role of data metrics in newsrooms. She frequently collaborates with international scholars and has contributed to policy inquiries, such as evidence submitted to the UK’s Culture, Media, and Sport Committee on ‘fake news’.

Dr. Elsheikh has received accolades for her pedagogical contributions and maintains active involvement in professional journalism communities. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges academic research with practical insights from her journalistic career, offering unique perspectives on media’s societal role in volatile political environments.