Rachel Davis Mersey

Dean, Moody College of Communication, UT Austin

Davis Mersey moderated the panel “Press Forward: A half-billion-dollar philanthropic initiative to revitalize U.S. local news” at the 25^th ISOJ. Watch the presentation here.

Rachel Davis Mersey is dean of Moody College of Communication, holds an appointment as Everett D. Collier Centennial Chair in the School of Journalism and Media and is a member of the Communication and Leadership faculty. Before joining the UT faculty, she was as a professor and the associate dean for research at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. She also held courtesy appointments in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and School of Education and Social Policy and was a fellow at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research.

Mersey has worked extensively with academics and industry partners to research, develop and launch new media products and is an expert in identity salience and media use, the influence of digital media on community-building, and understanding audiences and their information needs. She is the author of two books, and most recently, worked as director of global research partnerships at Meta, where she led the international team that created the infrastructure for the company to share privacy-protected data with academics. Mersey holds a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and began her career as a reporter at the Gannett-owned Arizona Republic.