Dr Rhian Waller
Visiting Lecturer in BA Journalism
Rhian has a background in journalism and post-compulsory education. She has recently re-entered academia after working in print journalism for five years at a regional newspaper group. While working as a journalist in North Wales and Chester, she covered local hard news before going into feature writing where she wrote about everything from politics to police operations to deadly parasites. Her interviewees include Katie Price, Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Gary Numan. Some of her stranger stories were syndicated to national newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. While working as a features writer contributing to in-house magazines and a daily newspapers in three counties, she also taught at a further education college. She was nominated and shortlisted for a Mind Media Award in 2013 for her features on mental health issues.
Rhian joined the Media team in 2015. This year she will deliver level four and five modules in practical and theoretical journalism. She teaches on The Newsroom: Reporting, Production and Theory, Journalism Regulation, Research for Professions, Practice and Academic Purposes and Journalism Production: Theory and Practice.
Mental health and journalism, environment and environmentalism in mass media, literature through a postcolonial, ecocritical and feminist lenses, and pop culture studies.
Rhian's first novel Eithe's Way was published in June 2014.
Pending publications:
Waller, R (2019). "Concentrated Noir: Reinforcing and transgressing genre boundaries in Echo" in Short Film Studies.
Waller, R. "Postcolonial Pictures: Examining the Penguin edition book covers of Paul Theroux’s travel writing through a visual social semiotic lens" in Mobile Culture Studies.
Bowen, M, Lovell, A., Waller, R. "Stigma: the representation of anorexia nervosa in UK newspaper Twitter feeds" Journal: Journal of Mental Health (IJMH)
Rhian holds a BA in English Literature and a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing, a PgCert in Higher Education and is a FHEA Fellow.
She also has professional qualifications in journalism (NCTJ and NQJ).