Kosta Gouliamos

Dr. Kostas Gouliamos is the Professor and Rector of European University Cyprus. He is an internationally recognized authority on culture, media and political communication and marketing.

Prof. Gouliamos has been appointed member of the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation in Strasbourg (2005–2008) as well as member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Social Survey. He is coordinator for the National Center for Social Research of Greece (EKKE) in Cyprus.

He and his co-author W. Anselmi have been considered by the University of Toronto Quarterly as one of “the Frankfurt School's…epigones (who) take a stab at their own apocalyptic versions of the irrationality of the Now…of the information society”. It has also been noted that his work “… drawing on the work of critics such as …Guattari-Deleuze, Durkheim, Giddens, and Touraine… is a thought- provoking and written with some finesse”.

Professor Kostas Gouliamos is also known for his distinctly social study on issues pertinent to current phenomena of modern society such as multiculturalism, media representations, citizenship, neocolonialism, the growing role of supranational forces, corporate social responsibility and ethics. Since he began teaching in higher educational institutions (1980), Prof. Gouliamos has written seven books with a critical perspective, several chapters in various volumes, and has had a considerable number of papers published in journals or/and magazines.

He has also contributed to two World Reports on media, culture and communication (published in 1996 and 1997 by the International Institute of Communication, and participated as discussant in the process of “Our Creative Diversity – Report of the World on culture and Development” organized by UNESCO and published (1995) by Egoprim, France.

His major co-authored book Elusive Margins: Consuming Media, Ethnicity and Culture (1998) and co-edited volume Mediating Culture: the politics of representation (1994) have been selected and included in the libraries and curricula of the 20 best universities of the world. A number of his books and chapters have been selected as required text for graduate and postgraduate studies in many universities around the world.

Parts of the total body of his work have been translated into French, Spanish, Greek and Italian. Gouliamos' books and papers either in English or Greek provide a comprehensive, critical hermeneutic approach to media, culture and communication, drawing on new developments and current debates. The main dimensions of his work include interalia: information highway, media and multiculturalism, the polyarchy of new media technologies, cultural identity, cultural formations in the era of information society, colonization of the Lifeworld, state/democracy and media representations, media policy, the iconcentrism of political communication/marketing, media policy, media accountability, broadcasting and citizens, the nature of social transformation or/and alteration.

Gouliamos employs an interdisciplinary approach in which culture refers to the organization of experience mediated by channels of communication (media, in particular) and shared by members of community.

Professor Gouliamos, along with Professor Anselmi, helped create a "new concept" in the sphere of communication (in the context of informational mode of development) – "Neo-colonization of the Lifeworld” – aiming to study both the consequences of cultural asymmetries and the practices of exclusion in the new media technologies. Consequently, he introduced such pivotal concepts as "virtual hegemony of multicultural ideology" or "the politics of neurosis", which have now become analytical tools for theorists and social scholars in the fields of media communication and cultural studies. In view of this, he has made major contributions to multicultural theory and to the theories of the diminution of the nation-state as a result to the accelerated emergence of the new media technologies. Indeed, his work has helped scholars to the understanding of how the hegemonic discourses' intervention – through mass media –- has brought about social and cultural disruption on a scale never before conceivable.

Professor Kostas Gouliamos has taken part in numerous international conferences and he has given many lectures as a keynote speaker in a number of respectable academic institutions. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Business and Society (since 2007), and is a member of the Editorial Board of several leading academic journals, including the Journal of Political Marketing ( Managing Associate Editor), Journal Public Affairs and the Global Media Journal. He has served on review panels as Reporter and Referee for the European Science Foundation, high-ranking journals and major academic associations (e.g. International Communication Association).

Before coming to Cyprus College, he taught at leading North American and European higher educational institutions.

He was also serving in Canada as an elected Secretary (1994–1996) for RUSELC. In this position, he has fostered an interdisciplinary critical-oriented research dealing with the issue of modernity in culture, literature and media.

He is founder and Director of the Laboratory for Business, Ethics and Society (La. B.E.S.) at the School of Business/Cyprus College; a pioneering research locus for Cyprus.

Gouliamos sets out probing research perspectives towards constructing or weaving networks of interaction and interconnectedness across societies, which make up the modern world system. Accordingly, his projects identify those practices, which contribute to the alteration and transformation of society. A greater sensitivity to the forms of the study of modernity is also reflected in his recent discourse of modern phenomena such as “media accountability”, “television governance”, “trust performance”, “cultural commodity”, “poverty and inequality”, “consumerism”, “cultural capital”, “media and cultural competence”, “information ethics”, “the politics of marketing communications”, “iconcentrism communication”, “ communicative ethics and social crisis”. As reality has been predominantly replaced by simulation, Prof. Gouliamos – throughout his research work – has devoted space to examining these kinds of media and culture arguments dealing with the “crisis of information” as well as “information and cultural asymmetries”. The concepts of "crisis"and "symmetry" lead to the phenomenon of deconstructive paralysis, as it is inscribed in most of his studies.

He is active in policy debates in Europe as has served as a media and communication consultant/expert to governments, broadcasting organizations, the European Union, and public–private institutions or authorities as well as to NGOs.

In 2006, the Ministers' Council of the Republic of Cyprus has appointed Gouliamos to serve as a Member of the Study Committee for the formation of the Cyprus Cultural Authority, the state's policy-making entity.