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Our People
Dr Conor McGrath
Lecturer in Public Relations
Dr Conor McGrath
Lecturer in Public Relations
Life Before Ulster
Dr Conor McGrath re-joined the School of Communication & Media in 2015, having previously taught here from 1999 to 2004.
Conor’s degree was in politics and parliamentary studies at the University of Leeds, which included a year spent on placement in the US Congress and UK House of Commons. He has worked as a researcher for a Conservative MP, as a senior account executive at a political intelligence firm in Westminster, as a self-employed lobbyist, and as public affairs director at a PR agency in Northern Ireland.
His PhD was awarded in 2008 for a thesis titled ‘Lobbyists as Professional Political Communicators’.
Teaching
Conor teaches public relations theory and practice, lobbying, public affairs and political communication at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
He is also placement co-ordinator for the CAM and CMPR degrees, helping 2nd years find year-long work placements.
At Ulster, Conor has been course director of:
- BSc in Public Relations
- MSc in Political Lobbying and Public Affairs
- MA in Journalism Studies.
He undertook a Postgraduate Certificate in University Teaching in 2003, and Conor became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2015.
Research
A member of the Centre for Media Research, Conor’s research interests centre around lobbying, public affairs and public relations; he is currently working on topics in British politics and media coverage of politics.
His latest book is Rethinking Public Relations: Persuasion, Democracy & Society, Third Edition (co-authored with Kevin Moloney; Routledge, 2020).
Conor has also written one book and edited 5 others on lobbying, and co-edited 1 book on Irish politics.
He has written about 40 journal articles and book chapters.
A full listing of his publications can be found at: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8805-3996.
Conor currently acts as Deputy Editor of the Journal of Public Affairs and is a member of the editorial board of Interest Groups and Advocacy. He has examined 4 doctoral theses and welcomes inquiries from potential PhD students in his areas of interest.
Civic Roles
Conor is currently a member of the NI committee of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
He has in the past served as: President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland; founding Chairman of the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group; a member of the Management Board of the European Centre for Public Affairs; and Chair of Education at the Public Relations Institute of Ireland. Conor can be found on Twitter @ConorMcGrathPR, and edits our students' group blog at www.ulsterprstudentblog.com
Dr Robert Porter
Lecturer in Sociology
Dr Robert Porter
Lecturer in Sociology
Robert Porter is Director of the Centre for Media Research, Ulster University.
UK. Publications include:
- The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism (EUP, 2013) co-edited with B. Dillet and I. Mackenzie
- Dramatizing the Political (Palgrave, 2011) co-authored with I. Mackenzie
- Deleuze and Guattari: Aesthetics and Politics (University of Wales Press, 2009)
- Ideology: Contemporary Social, Political and Cultural Theory (University of Wales Press, 2009)
His more recent book, Meanderings through the Politics of Everyday Life, will be published by Rowan and Littlefield.
Dr Phil Ramsey
Lecturer
Dr Phil Ramsey
Lecturer
Life Before Ulster
Dr Phil Ramsey holds BA, MA and PhD degrees in media studies from Ulster University. His PhD thesis was titled New Labour and the Public Sphere: a normative critique, and addressed government communication in the UK from 1997 to 2010.
He taught extensively in the former School of Media, Film and Journalism at Ulster between 2007 and 2012, on modules in journalism studies, media and cultural studies, and documentary film. Phil then returned to Ulster University in August 2016, having previously been Assistant Professor in Digital and Creative Media at the University of Nottingham (Ningbo) China between 2012 and 2016.
Teaching
Phil currently teaches political communication, critical approaches to public relations and public relations practice, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
These areas coalesce around the concept of the public sphere, and on the formation of public opinion, a concept which theoretically ties his teaching and research interests together.
His approach to these topics is structured around critical political economy of communication and critical theory approaches. In the past he has taught across a range of topics in media and communication, including media and cultural theory, and journalism studies, arts and cultural policy, and intercultural communication.
He has been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2017. Phil also supervises PhD students in the areas of political communication, and discourse and society. He is interested in PhD applications for projects in these areas, along with those in media policy, public service media, the creative industries, and critical approaches to public relations.
Research
Phil’s research focuses mainly on media policy and public service media in the UK, with a specific focus on the work of the BBC.
He addresses media governance and the political economy of the UK’s media system, and has written on the use of the public value approach at the BBC, the move online of BBC Three, and on debates around the devolution of broadcasting powers in the UK. Other strands of his research have dealt with cultural policy in the UK, Northern Irish culture and society, the relationship between media and democracy, and critical approaches to political public relations.
Phil’s research has been published in a number of international journals that include Media, Culture & Society, Convergence, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Journal of Radio and Audio Media and Television & New Media. He tweets on media policy and higher education policy at @ramsey_phil.
Civic Roles
Phil Ramsey was Chair of the UK’s MeCCSA Policy Network (Media and Cultural Studies Association) from January 2018 to June 2021, previously serving as Vice-Chair (2017–2018).
The network functions to exchange ideas and research findings, and also seeks to join with civil society in their debates with the regulators, the broadcasters and the Government. He has also engaged through events, knowledge exchange and research activities with a number of external institutions, including: the BBC, the BBC Trust, Ofcom, Impress (press regulator), and the Press Council of Ireland.
Through his teaching activities, he has engaged with, among others: the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the National Autistic Society (Northern Ireland), the Irish Football Association, and Expac, through the Conflicts of Interest course (which was an EU Peace & Reconciliation funded programme).
Professor Richard Ekins
Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies
Professor Richard Ekins
Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies
Richard Ekins has been Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at Ulster University since 2006 (later Emeritus), Professor of Media Studies, 2012-2014, and Professor of Media since 2019. A former jazz musician and current New Orleans jazz record producer for 504/La Croix Records, he is trained in law (Ll.B, Birmingham, 1966); sociology (PhD, London, 1978); psychoanalytic psychotherapy (M.Med.Sc, QUB, 1989); psychoanalysis (M. Inst. of Psychoanal, 1996); and popular music studies/musicology/jazz studies (MA, Liverpool, 2011). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Research
In the late 1970s, Richard was among the first in the world to pioneer a social constructionist (sociological) approach to the field of transgender, then dominated by medico-psychiatric approaches. He was founder and director of the Transgender Archive, Ulster University, 1986-2010. He has published ten books and over 190 articles and book chapters, including The Transgender Phenomenon (with Dave King), CHOICE MAGAZINE Outstanding Academic Title for 2007. As a psychoanalyst with some twenty years of clinical experience, he has made a substantial contribution to the field of psychoanalytic studies, in relation to contemporary developments within classical (Freudian) psychoanalysis, including his 2015, Penguin Modern Classics edition of Anna Freud: Selected Writings (with Ruth Freeman). Since 2005, he has revisited his earlier interests in ‘Early Jazz and New Orleans Jazz Revivalism’ and is publishing in that field in both academic journals and enthusiasts’ jazz magazines, principally in relation to social constructions of ‘authenticity’ and grounded theory historiography.
More recently, he has published The Politics of Authenticating: Revisiting New Orleans Jazz with his interlocutor Robert Porter (Rowman & Littlefield [Lexington] 2023). The second book in this series will be Psychoanalysis and the Politics of Authenticating, also with Robert Porter as his interlocutor. Meanwhile, he has completed two books to be published in association with Just Jazz magazine: The Genesis and Exodus of Preservation Hall: The Ken Grayson Mills Story and The Birthing of Preservation Hall: The Barbara Glancey Reid Story.
Most recently, he is collaborating with Microsoft Copilot AI companion on a number of autoethnographic projects. This autobiographical research revisits his previous articles on the pioneering English modernist writer Dorothy Richardson and published in the Dorothy Richardson Society journal Pilgrimages.
