At present, I hold the position of Secretary General at the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. I’ll continue my academic path as Adjunct Professor of Communication at the University of Helsinki. I’m also a Co-Chairman of INBREC Chapter Nordics. Previously I held the positions of Professor of Digital Communication at the University of Helsinki and Professor of Innovation Communication at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. All in all, I have close to fifteen years working experience as a professor in the area of communication and media studies
I received my master’s degree (1993) and doctorate (1999) in Communication from the University of Helsinki. Prior to my fixed-term professorships at the University of Helsinki, I was a visiting scholar at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (2002) and a postdoctoral researcher appointed by the Academy of Finland (2001–2003).
In 2010, I received tenure as a full professor at the University of Jyväskylä (Organizational Communication and PR). From 2011–2012, I served as a visiting scholar at Stanford University. In 2012–2013, I acted as the Head of Discipline of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki.
I have over ten years working experience as a professor in the area of communication and media studies. My experience in teaching and research is in the special fields of organizational communication and PR, digital communication, and—particularly of late—media studies.
My expertise in research is versatile. I have conducted interdisciplinary research and published in the areas of strategy and reputation studies, social media, and complexity theories related to different organizational aspects. Lately, I have been investigating the relationships between corporate strategy, reputation and contemporary media.
My work focuses on strategic reputation management and elucidates digital publicity, such as social media, as a communicative context for firms to connect to their publics. I have always looked for new approaches and methodological solutions and combined various theoretical perspectives with traditional and emergent quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches. For example, I have been leading a multidisciplinary research team that studies the emotional effects of media firms’ reputation on digital content consumption by combining communication research methods with contemporary neurophysiological measurements.
Pekka Aula 