Robert Mejia examines how identity is articulated and to what effect as it operates within and across a range of communicative channels and environments, from social movements to mass mediated contexts. His current work focuses on social movement organizing and theory development within the United States and Latin America.
Robert Mejia is a Lecturer of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara and award-winning interdisciplinary scholar. Mejia is a second-generation Mexican American from Southern California, received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was previously a tenured professor at North Dakota State University. He is a respected scholar of race and communication and has published 3 edited books, 15 journal articles, 14 book chapters, and has delivered more than 90 invited lectures and conference presentations. Mejia is the past chair of the National Communication Association’s Critical and Cultural Studies Division (CCSD), and in 2018 received the CCSD division’s New Investigator Award for his early career research, teaching, and service contributions to humanistic scholarship. He is also the 2019 co-recipient of the CCSD’s outstanding article award for his co-authored article, “White Lies: A Racial History of the Post-Truth” in the journal of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. An interdisciplinary scholar, Mejia’s work has appeared in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, Rhetoric, Politics & Culture, Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, Women’s Studies in Communication, and other academic and popular venues.
Ph.D. (2012), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Communications
M.A. (2007), California State University, Long Beach, Communication Studies
B.A. (2005), California State University, Long Beach, Communication Studies