Director of Education

Email: l.t.price@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr. Lada Trifonova Price is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism, CFOM’s Director of Education, Leading the Resilience in Journalism practice and education research strand of CFOM. She is a former journalist and a foreign correspondent for radio Deutsche Welle. She completed her PhD at Sheffield in 2013 and has worked on journalism safety for more than a decade. Her current work focuses on challenges to media freedom and journalistic practice in Eastern and Southern European democracies as well as examining the impact of trauma on journalists. She has published several papers on journalism practice in fragile democracies, threats to press freedom, censorship and self-censorship, ethical challenges, and violence
against journalists. She was the editor of the Routledge Companion to Journalism
Ethics published in 2021 and is currently editing a special issue on trauma literacy in global journalism education and practice.

Lada was awarded a BA Leverhulme Small Research Grant in April 2021 for a project co-investigated with Dr Ola Ogunyemi from the University of Lincoln. The study, titled “Creating a safe space for journalists to speak about trauma: Examining the roles of journalism educators” aimed to make a major contribution to knowledge in the field of journalism and trauma. The study conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups with journalism practitioners and educators about their awareness of trauma and its effects to develop a framework for building resilience to trauma among journalists and journalism students. This framework will be used to assist journalism schools in developing resilience training in their courses. The project is part of the international research group that Lada and Ola launched in 2020 – Journalism Education and Trauma Research Group (JETREG) with over 200 members and research hubs in seven world regions. As part of CFOM’s overall commitment to journalism safety, Lada’s work aims to develop a new framework for enhancing resilience to trauma among journalists and journalism students. At a time when the public needs credible independent journalism to stay safe and informed, journalists are grappling with a huge mental health crisis. 70% of journalists from 125 countries identified the mental health impacts of covering COVID-19 as the most difficult challenge they have faced. This work aims to strengthen the role of universities in preparing new generations of media professionals with skills to deal with trauma and increase awareness of occupational safety, which is urgently needed.