First, my name: it is Mandy Tröger but due to having lived in different countries, you can also find me as Mandy Troeger or Mandy Troger. I'm still the same person.
I am a Privatdozentin (PD) at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and an affiliate of the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Born and raised in (East) Berlin, I received my PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2018, and my PD in 2026 from the University of Tübingen, where I was a Walter Benjamin Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2023 until 2025. In July 2026, I will take up the position of Associate Professor at Södertörn University in Stockholm, funded by the Wallenberg Foundation.
My research focuses on (digital) media markets and communication history, critical theory, and the transformation of media and communication systems. At public events, I often talk about media history, issues of representation, journalism and (structural) diversity. I also care deeply for social justice issues and have been active in social justice work for years.
Since 2017, I am part of the organizing committee of the Network for Critical Communications Research (krikowi), and since 2022, vice-chair of the Political Economy Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). In 2024, I joined the board of editors of Journalism Research (Journalistik), a bilingual academic journal dedicated to journalism studies. I also work as a public author and speaker, and — until recently — was a (media) columnist at the Berlin newspaper Berliner Zeitung.