Dr Eike Mark Rinke

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds as a Lecturer in Politics and Media in 2019 following postdoctoral work in the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). I have studied at the University of Mannheim, George Washington University, and the University of Erfurt, and was a visiting researcher and instructor at the University of Washington and the İzmir University of Economics.

My work has been published as books and articles in refereed journals including the Journal of Communication, Political Communication, the International Journal of Press/Politics, Communication Methods and Measures, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I received the 2017 Outstanding Dissertation in Political Communication Award from the Political Communication Division and the 2015 Gene Burd Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association (ICA) as well as the 2016 Burns “Bud” Roper Fellow Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and 2015 Distinguished Junior Scholars Award from the Political Psychology Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

I am currently an Associate Editor of Political Communication, the official journal of the Political Communication Divisions of the ICA and APSA, and an Editorial Board member advising on the area of political communication for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication.

Responsibilities

• Co-Director, Centre for Democratic Politics
• School Open Research Lead

Research interests

I specialise in the empirical and normative study of political communication on both the individual and societal level. This includes studies of the democratic quality of how journalists and citizens communicate about political ideas, events, and people in different settings, from election campaigns to political participation events, and from social protest events to everyday life.

I am active in the meta-research and open science movement and the University of Leeds Local Network Lead for the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN), a national peer-led consortium that aims to ensure the UK retains its place as a centre for world-leading research.

I am also a member of the BITSS Catalyst programme of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) to promote research transparency, reproducibility, and openness as well as a moderator at SocArXiv, the Open Preprint Archive of the Social Sciences.

I also co-organized the 2019 MZES Open Social Science Conference at the University of Mannheim and served as Chair of the open scholarship conference theme (“Open Communication”) for the 70th Annual ICA Conference in May 2020 (all theme videos available here). My work promoting open research at the University of Leeds was recognised with a 2024 Research Culture Award in the category “Open Research Practices”.

Qualifications

• Dr. phil. Media and Communication Studies (University of Mannheim)
• MA Media and Public Affairs (George Washington University)
• BA Communication Studies and Social Sciences (University of Erfurt)

Professional memberships

• American Political Science Association (APSA)
• European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA)
• Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (DGPuK)
• International Communication Association (ICA)
• Text as Data Association (TaDA)

Student education

I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate modules on political communication as well as on open/meta-research. I am open to expressions of interest in PhD study under my supervision in my areas of expertise: media and democracy, public deliberation, journalism, communication and citizenship, meta-research, and open scholarship.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Democratic Engagement
• Centre for Contemporary Political Theory

Current postgraduate researchers

• Michael Mo
• Gemma Walker