Rachel Davis Mersey has been appointed Interim Dean of the Moody College of Communication.
She has served as Associate Dean for Research at Moody College and held the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Professorship in the School of Journalism and Media since 2020. In addition to her teaching, research, and leadership roles at UT, Dr. Mersey has spent the last two years collaborating with Meta to build the company’s platform for research partnerships.
Dr. Mersey replaces Dr Jay Bernhardt who will serve as the next President of Emerson College.
With experience as a professional journalist at the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com and more than a decade in higher education and academic administration, Dr. Mersey brings a passion for connecting scholarship and professional practice into impactful grant-funded research and initiatives.
She joined UT after serving at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications since 2008, most recently as Associate Dean for Research and Professor. She also served as the Executive Director of the Media Leadership Center and was a Fellow at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research.
Specializing in the study of the psychology of media use, community engagement and the impacts of effective message dissemination, she is the author of two successful books —Mobile Disruptions, with co-authors in the U.S. and the Middle East, examines the state of and opportunity for mobile media innovations in the Gulf states. Can Journalism Be Saved? Rediscovering America’s Appetite for News, which is at the foundation of work she still does today, stands as a formative argument recasting local news efforts as community-driven initiatives.
Mersey is currently collaborating with colleagues to examine the community infrastructure variables that are correlated with healthy local media markets. She is involved with a number of different industry-relevant projects including the examination of factors of media engagement; audience development via social video and augmented and virtual reality; and podcasting as a means to community building.
Previously, Mersey was a reporter at the Gannett-owned Arizona Republic, where she worked with azcentral.com and the NBC-affiliate.
She earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a master’s degree from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University.