Robin Hoecker joined the Journalism faculty in 2017. She teaches
undergraduate and
graduate courses in photojournalism and mass communication.
Robin earned her PhD in Media, Technology and Society at Northwestern University. She also holds a master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a bachelor’s degree in International Development from Penn State. As an undergraduate photojournalism student, Robin documented a tumultuous year of black student protests at Penn State and is currently working on a book about the cyclical nature of such protests.
Robin’s research looks at the intersection of visual communication and conflict. Her dissertation compared crime coverage in mainstream, African American and Spanish-language newspapers. She has also investigated the role of photography in national truth and reconciliation commissions, particularly in Latin America. Her work has earned top paper awards from the International Communication Association (ICA) and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).
Before graduate school, Robin worked at the Stars and Stripes military newspaper, as a reporter/photographer in Darmstadt, Germany and later as a multimedia editor in Washington, D.C. She also spent a year as a Fulbright Journalism Fellow in Frankfurt, Germany, where she studied European media systems and worked on a video project about cultural diversity at the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. Before diving into journalism, Robin worked on foreign policy issues at the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Robin loves to travel. She has studied/worked abroad in France, Germany and Senegal, and has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Latin America.
Robin is currently a 2017-18 Fellow at the Asset Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) at DePaul, where she is exploring ideas about community, journalism and social justice.
Selected Publications
- Hoecker, R. (forthcoming). "Telling other people’s stories: The iconic image of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission". Visual Communication Quarterly.
- Hoecker, R. (2014). "Visual narrative and trauma recovery". Narrative Inquiry. 24(2),259-280.
- Hoecker, R. and Hargittai, E. (2012). "Snap judgments: How students search the web for their rights to photograph in public". Communication Review. 15(4), 253-273.