Profile

My name is Florencia García-Rapp. I am a German-Argentinian qualitative social scientist working on media audiences, users, and communities. I analyse digital popular cultures from an ethnographic perspective and contribute to media anthropology. I have held a Senior Researcher position with the research group in “Applied Social Sciences” at University of Valladolid (Department of Sociology and Social Work). During 2022-2024, I was a Spanish Ministry of Science fellow (Juan de la Cierva Incorporación, funded by NextGenerationEU).

Previously, I worked at the University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in Media Audiences and Users and as a research associate within the research group “Media, Policy, and Culture” at the University of Antwerp (Department of Communication).

I was awarded a PhD in Communication (compilation of publications, summa cum laude) by Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, after finishing the program in June 2017. I was recipient of the university‘s outstanding PhD prize, awarded in recognition of the quality and impact of doctoral research contributions. I also hold a Master‘s Degree in Media Culture from Paderborn University in Germany and a Degree (Licenciatura) in Audiovisual Communication from Argentina.

I left Argentina 16 years ago to pursue my research interests at the intersections of digital and popular cultures with audiences and fandom research. I question prescriptive modes of argumentation that quickly classify people, cultures, and objects of fandom as normative/resistant/legitimate/trivial. Rather, I approach audiences (users, fans, citizens) from interpretive epistemologies, acknowledging subjectivities within global media landscapes. As there is no paradigm-free way of seeing, I seek to bring forward research that tolerates ambivalence, contradictions, and embraces the complexity of social worlds and human interaction.

My work has been published by Celebrity Studies, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Television and New Media, First Monday, Journal of Media Practice, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, and International Journal of Web-Based Communities. I also contributed a chapter to Routledge’s edited collection Mediated Intimacies (ECREA Book Series). Two further articles on parenthood, humour and Peruvian TikTok, have been published by Visual Communication Quarterly and First Monday.  

Beyond my research, I contribute to the academic community through peer review and institutional evaluation. Drawing on my background in UK higher education, I am an Expert Member of the ESRC Peer Review College (UKRI), the national funding body for social and economic research. I am also an international evaluator for PhD program accreditations (NEAQA, Serbia), prior learning recognition (MFHEA, Malta), and research grants for the University of Lima, Peru.

In Spain, I served as a Member of the External Evaluation Committee for the MSCA-COFUND PhD Program in Anthropology and Communication (Universitat Rovira i Virgili), performing admission evaluations for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral fellowship program. I also support scholarly publishing as an Editorial Board member for the journal Celebrity Studies (Taylor and Francis) and as a monograph reviewer for Palgrave Macmillan. I have been a doctoral and postdoc mentor for SIEF (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore) and currently serve as an international mentor for Euraxess and the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) PEP-CV platform, where I offer guidance in developing narrative-style CVs.

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