Home Faculties & Schools School of Arts and Creative industries Staff Dr Paul Rowinski

Dr Paul Rowinski

Senior Lecturer in Journalism

Paul Rowinski

Paul has worked for the regional, national and transnational media for two decades. He first worked for various UK regional newspapers, before becoming a national newspaper reporter.

He was a central European foreign correspondent and is now also an academic researcher looking at Euroscepticism in British and Italian media. He is the course co-ordinator for the MA in International Journalism and the BA in Journalism.

Paul is the Journalism lead on the university Sustainability Forum. The forum has informed journalism students' thinking, encouraging them to take a more joined-up holistic approach to what are complex issues and many students have come to challenge and critique the somewhat simplistic communication of issues such as immigration in the media, as a result. 

Recent conferences Paul has been involved with have focused on Human Rights and Modern slavery. He has chaired the media panels and journalism students at MA level and below, produced a series of journalism assignments and printed articles in the student magazine, focusing on human slavery and the abuse of refugees in British society.

Paul was a Berlin-based foreign correspondent working for The European, Scotland on Sunday and Times Educational Supplement, while also writing for other national titles, like The Independent and Financial Times.

Paul also worked as an assistant producer on the English section of Deutsche Welle TV, producing regular world news bulletins and as a guest columnist for the Berlin-based quality broadsheet, Der Tagesspiegel and occasional features writer for Die Zeit. Paul has covered stories from Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy and the former Yugoslavia. On returning to the UK he worked on the Daily Mail foreign desk, The Times and The Sunday Times.

He was previously course leader for the Masters in International Journalism at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and prior to that delivered an undergraduate journalism degree for the University of Middlesex.

Paul's PhD looked at Euroscepticism in the newspapers of Rupert Murdoch in Britain and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, analysing both the discourse over Europe – and its political communication. Paul's research also looks at the relationships between national identity and media discourse. Paul was co-editor of Br(e)aking The News, Journalism, Politics and New Media, published in 2013 by Peter Lang and wrote a chapter in this book and Media/Democracy: A Comparative Study, published by Cambridge Scholars (2013). Both focused on the discursive construction of Europe in the Murdoch and Berlusconi press.

He organised a series of conference at the university, Britain in Europe, in April, 2015 and 2016, with politicians, journalists and academics debating the issues, as the UK hurtled towards the 2017 referendum on EU membership.

  • Degree in Humanities – University of Bradford.
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching in Adult and Higher Education - Birkbeck College, University of London.
  • Phd Journalism Studies – University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism – Westminster Press Group.
  • National Council for the Training of Journalists examination passes across the syllabus. Shorthand – 100wpm.
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching English to Students of Language (TESOL) – Trinity College
  • Rowinski, P. (2020) Post-Truth. Post-Press. Post-Europe. Euroscepticism and the Crisis of Political Communication. Cham: Palgrave.
  • Rowinski, P. (2018) Book Review: The Language of Brexit, Steve Buckledee. European Journal of Communication.
  • Regularly peer review paper submissions to the journals, Convergence and Social Semiotics.
  • P (2019) Post -Truth, Post-Press, Post-Europe: Euroscepticism and the Crisis of Political Communication. Cham: Palgrave.
  • Rowinski, P. (2019) What kind of England? The cultural battle over Brexit in the press and the trope of the EU migrant. In Ashley, T and Weedon, A. Developing a Sense of Place.
  • Rowinski, P. (2017) Evolving Euroscepticisms in the British and Italian Press: Selling the Public Short. Cham: Palgrave.
  • Rowinski, P. (2016) Mind the Gap: the language of prejudice and the press omissions that led a people to the precipice. In Jackson, D, Thorsen, E, Wring, D.(2016) EU Referendum Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the Campaign. Early reflections from leading UK academics. Political Studies Association. (52)
  • Rowinski, P. (2016) Euroscepticism in the Berlusconi and Murdoch press. Journalism.Vol. 17(8) 979 –1000.
  • Rowinski, P. (2015, June 8) Superficial and Eurosceptic. British Press Coverage of the EU. European Journalism Observatory.
  • Rowinski, P. (2013) Euroscepticism in the Berlusconi and Murdoch press: threatening attempts to restore an ailing European democracy? In Charles, A. (ed) Media/Democracy: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars
  • Rowinski, P (2013) Berlusconi, Murdoch and the power of persuasion over Europe. In Gordon, J, Rowinski, P and Stewart, G. (eds)

The student magazine, Focus makes a point of covering the diaspora of Luton, probably the most ethnically diverse town in the UK – outside of London.

  • Euroscepticism and its articulation in national societies and their media
  • Hybridisation and the interface with mainstream and social media
  • Post-Truth and Fake News
  • Brexit and media coverage
  • Populist politicians and the Press
  • Prejudice, xenophobia and hate speech in the media

E: paul.rowinski@beds.ac.uk