Dr Andrea Jean Baker is an internationally-award winnng journalist, author, educator and researcher with more than 20 years experience. Andrea is currently a senior lecturer in journalism in the School of Media, Film and Journalism (MFJ) at Monash University. She has been the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Journalism program at MFJ and the coordinator of the School of Journalism and Australian Studies‘ (JAS) PhD and Honours programs. 

Andrea has a Bachelor of Arts (Media and Politics), a Graduate Diploma (Business Management) and a PhD (Digital Communications). 

She has extensive experience in international research and teaching across media and communications theoretical units, and the rich array of journalism practice and journalism studies units in Undergraduate, Masters and PhD programs at Monash, and previously at Swinburne and La Trobe Universities in Melbourne, and in the US and Europe.  

Always international in scope, Andrea has held 3 overseas research residencies: City University of New York (CUNY), University of Texas at Austin (USA) and at Freie Universitiat in Berlin (Germany). She has also given guest discussions about her research in New York City at CUNY, The New School and Stony Brook University. Since 2006, she has presented research papers for the Annual International Association  for  Media and Communications Research Conferences at renowned universities around the world, such as University of Madrid (Spain, 2019);  Faculté de communication, Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada, 2015); University of Hyderabad (India, 2014); Universidad Nacional Autonomy de (UNA) Mexico City (Mexico, 2009); Sorbonne University’s Mass Communications Department in Paris (France, 2007) and the American University, Journalism and Mass Communications Department, Cairo (Egypt, 2006).

Internationally recognised as a radio and music journalist, Andrea produced national women’s news and current affairs radio programs during the late 1990s and won local, national and USA awards for  reportage about women's health and land rights.

As a journalism studies scholar, she has published internationally-award winning radio research linking interdisciplinary areas, such as urban music history, digital and urban communication, musicology, safety and gender.

At Monash, with an interdisciplinary approach, Andrea is a member of 3 research units: 1 School of Media, Film and Journalism's "Gender and Media Lab"; 2) "Journalism and Political Communication"; 3), Sir Zelman Cowen's School of Music's "Street Music Research Unit".  

She is the author of 2 internationally-award winning academic monographs (2012 and 2019), each book had between 12-15 chapters (totally 320 pages) and were commissioned by prestigious international publishers in the US and the UK.

Published in March 2019, Andrea’s 2^nd book, The Great Music City (Palgrave Macmillan, London) has been nominated for  several US book awards. The Great Music City was a Finalist in the US-led, International Book Awards at the American Book Festival in June 2019 for the category: Education/Academic. The monograph is this first international, comparative study about the music cities paradigm in the contemporary space. Across 15 chapters, and based on an algorithm that Andréa devised, the book explores  the music, space and identity of various music cities, such as London, Los Angeles, New York City, Melbourne, Austin and Berlin. 

In 2012 the International Association for Media and Communications Research and the Hampton Press (New York) prestigious award series chose Andrea’s 1^st monograph, Virtual Radio Ga Ga: Youths and Net-Radio for publication, which was the 1^st monograph (comprising of 12 chapters) commissioned in this series by a journalism, media and communications scholar since 2001. Virtual Radio Ga Ga is considered the first international study about the history and development of net radio.  

Using Melbourne as a case study, in 2017 Andrea designed an algorithm to assess music activities in urban contexts, which was published by Sage Open. In April 2018 she participated on an academic panel, “The Impact of Cultural Policy on Music Cities” for the now biannual ‘Music Cities Convention’. It was the first time the convention was held in the Southern Hemisphere.

2013-2017: Andrea was the foundational, academic representative on the City of Melbourne’s Music Strategy Committee; and has presented or chaired panels about global music cities, in 2013 at International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Australia  New Zealand; in 2014 at South by South West Inc., and in 2015 at Australia’s first national symposium about music cities, which was held in Melbourne. 

Andrea has been the guest co-editor of 2 special editions in high-ranking Journalism Studies journals: 

• Australian Journalism Review, "Safety of Journalists" (2018). 
• Journalism Practice (UK), "Sexual Violence & Journalism" (2020).

She has had more than 20 academic articles published and 3 chapters in book editions, with many peer-reviewed, high ranking journals and publishers, for example:

• Australian Journalism Monographs
• Australian Journalism Review
• Journalism Practice 
• Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
• The Radio Journal: international studies in broadcast and audio media
• Journal of Radio and Audio Media
• International Journal of Emerging Technologies
• Journal of Australian Studies
• Journal of Popular Music Studies 
• Global Media Journal 
• SAGE Open 
• Springer/Palgrave
• Routledge
• Oxford University Press 

Always maintaining her journalism practice while being a scholar, in recent years Andrea has more than 25 non-traditional research articles published in the legacy and online press, and has given extensive commentary in the media, such as the Conversation.com, the ABC, The AGE and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers. 

As an international, award winning radio journalist, Andrea has had contract work, produced various radio documentaries and been a commentator intermittently at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) since 1992.

Research interests, PhD, Masters and Honours, Supervisory areas: Andrea has supervised 2 PhD's to completion and has been an independant panel member for more than 30 PhD confirmations. She has also supervised and/or marked more than 25 Honours and Masters theses. Andrea warmly welcomes supervisions across all these academic levels in the 7 broad categories noted below. 

1. Journalism Studies (News analysis, Safety of Journalists, Sexual Violence & Gender);
2. Cultural journalism (Arts Music, Fashion, Literary, Film, Theatre, Visual Arts).
3. Media histories (News agencies, Media outlets, Magazines); 
4. Radio Studies (Public or Commerical Broadcasting, Student/College Radio);
5. Internet Studies (Internet Radio);
6. Mixed methods analysis (Survey analysis, Content analysis; Quantitative/Qualitative data); 
7. Urban communication (Music Cities; Creative Cities). 

If you want to get to know Andrea more, check out this link..