Funded by the Urban Communication Foundation, these awards recognise communication and media scholarly work that advances our understanding of the growing complexity of the urban environment. The awards are predicated on the assumption that communication scholars have a valuable contribution to make to an understanding of the urban landscape and are open to all IAMCR members in good standing.
From 2013 to 2022 the award was offered as a single grant designed to support research already in progress or in the beginning stages, giving priority to projects that feature innovative, inter-disciplinary, applied, and creative approaches to studying the central role of communication in the transformation of urban cultures and communities.
From 2023 the awards are offered annually to three papers that develop and explore innovative approaches to urban communication.
IAMCR is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Urban Communication Award: Sandra Jeppesen (Lakehead University Orillia, Canada), Mingjun Zhao and Yongliang Liu (Tsinghua University, China), María Isabel Norena Wiswell (UNIMINUTO, Colombia) and Maria Helena Botero Ospina (Universidad del Rosario, Colombia).
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2022 Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Dishha Medhavi and Kulveen Trehan (Guru Gobind Singh University, New Delhi) for their project "Street art for COVID-19 preparedness and response among Urban Poor of New Delhi in India".
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2021 Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Kelsey Whipple (U of Massachusetts) for her project "Welcome to the neighborhood: Examining hyper-local information-sharing and community development on NextDoor". An honorable mention goes to Ratan Naga Deepika (U of Hyderabad).
IAMCR & the Urban Communication Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2020 Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Masduki (Universitas Islam Indonesia, Indonesia) for his project From Street Art to Social Media: In Search of Alternative Public Service Media for Urban Javanese in the City of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Preeti Raghunath will receive an honorary mention.
IAMCR & the Urban Communication Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2019 Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Arlene Fernandez (University of Pennsylvania) for her project Meet Me at the Papi Store: Space, Place, and the ‘American Dream’ in Philadelphia Corner Stores. Erika Polson will receive an honorary mention.
IAMCR & the Urban Communication Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2018 Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Matthew Bui (University of Southern California) for his project (Re)Claiming the Smart City: Los Angeles, Racial Capitalism, and Sociotechnical Representations of Space. Bob Hanke & Rebecca Finkel will receive honorary mentions.
IAMCR and the Urban Communication Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2017 UCF/IAMCR Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Andreas Papallas, a Research Associate at the Cyprus University of Technology, for his project Using Social Media Communication to Detect Patterns of Urban Segregation and Aggregation within Contested Cities.
IAMCR and the Urban Communication Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2016 UCF/IAMCR Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Myria Georgiou and Wallis Motta-Guarneros, both from the Department of Media and Communications of the London School of Economics and Political Science, for their project Community Through Digital Connectivity? Communication Infrastructure in Multicultural London.
Olesya Venger, winner of the 2015 Urban Communication Research Grant, will present the results of her research during a special session at IAMCR 2016. Her paper, Spatiality of sexual marketing in Las Vegas: Fun, surveillance, and illusion of "sin" on the Strip, grew out of research that sought "to investigate how the promotion of sexual services fits into a constantly contested above- and underground space of Las Vegas, the iconic "city of sin".
IAMCR and the Urban Communication Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2015 UCF/IAMCR Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Olesya Venger, Assistant Professor at the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
On 28 August at a small ceremony in Limassol, Cyprus, Yiannis Christidis was formally awarded the 2014 UCF/IAMCR Urban Communication Research Grant.
IAMCR and the Urban Communication Foundation are pleased to announce that the 2014 UCF/IAMCR Urban Communication Research Grant will be awarded to Yiannis Christidis, a PhD candidate and lecturer in the Department of Communication and Internet Studies at Cyprus University of Technology.
The 2013 UCF-IAMCR Grant was awarded to Geoff Ostrove a PhD candidate in the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism & Communication. Having recently received a Master of Community & Regional Planning, Geoff’s research primarily focuses on the political economy of communication and how that process influences our society’s perception of certain resources. He currently holds a fellowship on Natural Resources Policy awarded by the Oregon Sea Grant, and he is working with the Oregon Office of Emergency Management on a project to help mitigate the impacts of the large amount of marine debris that is now present in the Pacific Ocean as a result of the 2011 Japan tsunami.