Maria del Mar de Fontcuberta Balaguer PhD

Mar de Fontcuberta holds a PhD in Communication Sciences (Journalism section) from Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB, 1983), Cum Laude.  She is the Director of the MA Programme in Social Communication with a minor in Communication and Education from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC).  She teaches at both the PUC and the UAB.  She worked for 19 years as a journalist.  She was part of the Project Childhood/Consensus (1995), approved by the Cataluña Parliament.  She was advisor to the team of the curriculum in Language and Communication area of the Ministry of Education in Chile (2006).  Maria is also the author of several publications about journalism and the relation between media and education.  She is a member of the experts group in Media Education of the Council of National Television of Chile.

Since 1994 she has been a member of Cabinet of Communication and Education of UAB aimed at the development of research and promotion of Media Education projects.  Now she works in the project I + D + I “DYNAMIC”  “Development of Media Literacy Indicators of individual, corporate and citizen”.  This project will be develped by the  Cabinet of Communication and Education of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)  from January 2012 with partners from several European universities.

The research is funded by the Programa Nacional de Proyectos de Investigación Fundamental No Orientada (I+D+I), under the VI Programa Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica 2008-2011, from the Ministry of Science and Innovation from Spain.

The main objective of the new initiative is to design a system of indicators for Media Literacy, which applies to individuals, companies, corporations and groups.  As for contributions, DYNAMIC will assess the skills and abilities of individuals with respect to the use of ICT and its potential to solve problems such as content creation, among others.

Mar de Fontcuberta takes part of Mentor Association Board as vice president for Latin America o MENTOR Media Literacy Association.  Mentor Project was born as an initiative financed by the European Commission Education and Training Program in 2002.

Find more information about Maria on her faculty page.