Florence Zivaishe Madenga has been named the George Gerbner Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication.

Ms. Madenga, who studies journalism, globalization, and state-sponsored media, will defend her dissertation titled, “Taking Satire Journalism Seriously: Living and Laughing to Bring the State Down?” in July. The George Gerbner Fellowship, named in honor of the school’s second dean, is awarded in alternate years to a graduate of Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication or USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The faculty of the opposite school selects the recipient from the group of applicants, who is then in residence at Penn for the duration of the fellowship.

While the Gerbner Fellowship normally lasts for two years, Ms. Madenga will leave in fall 2024 to start a tenure track position at Boston College as an assistant professor of race and communication. As a Gerbner Fellow, she will build upon her dissertation research, continuing to investigate the concept of “satire journalism” as a means to analyze journalism under a military dictatorship in Zimbabwe and on the internet.

In addition to her research, Ms. Madenga is at work on an oral history project that she started with Olivia Haynie, an undergraduate student at Penn, on the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (PABJ), the nation’s oldest professional association of journalists of color. Ms. Madenga also plans to work with organizations at Penn to facilitate partnerships between Black undergraduate students interested in journalism and local organizations like PABJ.

Before beginning her doctoral work at Annenberg, Ms. Madenga completed a master’s degree in humanities and social thought at New York University. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and politics from New York University. Currently, she is a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication and a graduate fellow at the Center for Media at Risk.