Professor Ian Richards

Ian Richards is Adjunct Professor of Journalism Studies at the University of South Australia.

He is an Australian Research Council "Expert of International Standing", and in 2014 was awarded life membership of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) in recognition of his contribution to Australian journalism research and education. JERAA represents Australia’s journalism and journalism studies academics.

Professor Richards was editor of Australian Journalism Review, Australia's leading refereed journal in the academic fields of journalism and journalism studies, from 2003-2017. His research interests include journalism and media ethics, and regional/rural journalism. In 2010 he became the inaugural Dart Australasia Academic Fellow when he was awarded a Dart Foundation Fellowship at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York, USA.

He is an executive member of the World Journalism Education Council (WJEC), an informal coalition representing 32 academic associations involved in journalism and mass communication at university level. He was heavily involved in organising all four WJEC congresses held so far (New Zealand 2016; Belgium 2013; South Africa 2010 and Singapore 2007). 

In 2010 and again in 2012, Professor Richards was a member of the Australian Research Council’s Humanities and Creative Arts Research Evaluation Committee set up as part of the Australian Government's ERA (Excellence in Research Australia) exercise. ERA is designed to assess research quality within Australia's higher education institutions using a combination of indicators and expert review.

Professor Richards chaired UniSA's Human Research Ethics Committee from 2005 to 2011, and from 2014-16 was Research Integrity Adviser for the Division of EAS. This position, which is aligned with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research , involved advising staff and HDR students in relation to research practice and allegations of research misconduct.

While Chair of UniSA’s HREC, Professor Richards oversaw major changes to the University's research ethics approval system and the University's response to the revised Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. In 2008, he chaired a small working party which organised and ran Australia’s first national forum on non-medical research and the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (the national standard which guides ethics committees at Australian universities).

Professor Richards was one of 12 invited presenters at an international communication ethics colloquium in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA in 2008 to mark the retirement of eminent scholar Clifford Christians, and an invited presenter at an intensive media ethics colloquium organised by the University of Montreal and McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2009. He was also an invited speaker at UNESCO’s “International Symposium on Media and Ethics” in Ankara, Turkey, in 2006, and one of 15 journalism educators and researchers invited to Paris, France, by UNESCO's Division for Communication Development for the first "Experts' Consultative Meeting on Journalism Education" in 2005.

As a member of a working party formed by UniSA, Flinders University and the University of Adelaide, Professor Richards was closely involved in the establishment of the collaborative Ethics Centre of South Australia (ECSA), and continued to be involved until ECSA's demise in 2012.

A former newspaper journalist, he has a wide range of journalistic experience extending from general reporting to leader-writing and covering indigenous affairs for a metropolitan daily newspaper. He has worked and studied in Australia and the United Kingdom, and is a past president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA). He was also awarded the first PhD in journalism in the state of South Australia.

Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA)

International Communication Association (ICA)

International Association for Mass Communication and Media Research (IAMCR)

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Master of Arts (Mass Communication) University of Leicester

• Bachelor of Arts Flinders University