Jessica Retis
Jessica Retis, Ph.D., is Full Professor and Director of the School of Journalism. She is also Director of the Master’s in Bilingual Journalism and Affiliated Faculty with the Center for Latin American Studies and the Human Rights Practice Program at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Retis joined UArizona in 2019 to help launch and lead the Bilingual Journalism Program. She holds a Major in Communications (University of Lima, Peru), a Masters in Latin American Studies (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and a PhD in Contemporary Latin America (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain). She has almost three decades of teaching experience in several universities in the United States, Spain and Mexico. Before joining the University of Arizona, she taught bilingual journalism for a decade at California State University Northridge (CSUN). Her teaching awards include CSUN’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2019), and CSUN’s Polished Apple Award (2009 and 2013). She has trained bilingual journalists currently working in various newsrooms in the U.S. and abroad. Prior to entering academia, Retis worked for more than two decades as a journalist in Peru, Mexico and Spain in various print and broadcast media outlets.
Her areas of research include Latin America, international migration, diasporas and transnational communities; cultural industries; ethnic media; diversity and the media; Latino media in Europe, North America and Asia; bilingual journalism, journalism studies, and journalism education. She is co-editor of The Handbook of Diasporas, Media and Culture (Willey, 2019) and co-author of Narratives of Migration, Relocation and Belonging: Latin Americans in London (Palgrave, 2020). Recent book chapters include “Migrations and the Media between Asia and Latin America: Japanese-Brazilians in Tokyo and São Paulo” (Sage, 2019), “Hashtag Jóvenes Latinos: Challenges and opportunities of teaching civic advocacy journalism in ‘glocal’ contexts” (Peter Lang, 2018), “The transnational restructuring of communication and consumption practices. Latinos in the urban settings of global cities” (Routledge, 2017). Recent reports include: Hispanic Media Today. Serving Bilingual and Bicultural Audiences in the Digital Age (Democracy Fund, 2019), La circulación de la cultura en español en las ciudades globales de los Estados Unidos: Los Ángeles, Nueva York, Miami (Hispanic Cultural Circuits in Urban Context of Global Cities: Los Angeles, New York, Miami) (RIE, 2019), and Los Latinos y las industrias culturales en español en Estados Unidos (Latinos and Spanish-language Cultural Industries in the U.S.) (RIE, 2015).
Dr. Retis currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Diaspora and the Media Working Group for the International Association of Mass Communication Research (IAMCR), Co-Chair of the Latina/o Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). She is also the Vice-President of the Binational Association for Schools of Communication (BINACOM). On October 2020, Retis was elected Academic At-Large Officer of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ). She also the NAHJ Student Chapter at UofA.