Media & Communications Faculty

Paul Anstiss has worked as a broadcast news journalist for more than 25 years. He was a television reporter and news reader for the BBC (Breakfast News, BBC News Channel, and BBC World Television) and for the ITV commercial network in the United Kingdom. Anstiss also worked for five years as a senior producer, reporter and presenter for Radio Netherlands Worldwide. During the course of his career, Paul has travelled extensively on assignments throughout the world and covered a wide range of stories including the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, G7 summits, conflicts in Somalia and Bosnia, and climate change in Antarctica.

Today, in addition to his work as a lecturer in journalism, media literacy and media ethics, Anstiss writes for companies such as Shell, AEGON, and Amsterdam Marketing. He coaches politicians and company executives in Europe, Africa and the Middle East on their media and presentation strategies.

Alexandra Arshanskaya, MSc, is a visual artist, performer, and educator with a background in science and finance. Her professional practice is devoted to spatial perception and includes a broad exploration of representation and abstraction of space in painting, drawing, performance, digital art, photography, videography, graphic design, illustrations, installations, murals, etc. Arshanskaya has exhibited, performed, and collaborated on different visual and interdisciplinary projects in St. Louis (USA), London (UK), Berlin (Germany), St-Petersburg (Russia) and across The Netherlands. Currently Arshanskaya’s artwork “Vanishing Point” is exhibited at ISS as a part of the Moon Gallery project. Arshanskaya studied exact sciences at the St. Petersburg State University, Russia (MS degree in Mathematical Economics), and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Royal Academy of Art (The Hague, The Netherlands) in 2012. Besides lectures on digital photography and design courses at the Media Communication Department and basic art course at the Art Department of Webster University at campuses in Leiden and St. Louis, USA, Arshanskaya gives workshops in variety of visual techniques and creates visualizations during conferences and other events.

Taco Hidde Bakker is a writer, translator and researcher based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 2007, he completed a master’s degree in Photographic Studies at Leiden University with a thesis on the crossroads of photography theory and visual anthropology. Subsequently, he worked as researcher and writer on the large-scale documentary project, "The Last Days of Shishmaref," with Paradox and photographer Dana Lixenberg. His writings about art and photography have been widely published in magazines, including Camera Austria International, Foam Magazine, EXTRA, British Journal of Photography, and The PhotoBook Review, and also in catalogues and artist’s books.

His first volume of essays, "The Photograph That Took the Place of a Mountain," was published in 2018 by Fw:Books.

Pablo Lerma, MFA, is a Spanish research-based artist, educator and publisher based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His artistic practice is developed at the intersection of image and text, with a focus on visual archives and vernacular materials dealing with notions of collective memory, representation and queerness. His work takes various forms from photographic installations to publications. Lerma’s work has been exhibited at several galleries, museums, and festivals around the world. His publications are in collections including the Guggenheim Museum (US), Museum of Modern Art–MoMA (US), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art–SFMoMA (US), Aeromoto (MX), Centro de la Imagen (MX), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (US), and the International Center of Photography in New York (US). He has been awarded with the Cherryhurst House Fellowship MFA Houston (US), Grand Prize of Curators Award PDN (US), Fundació Guasch-Coranty (ES) and Sala d’Art Jove (ES). He was selected for Pla(t)form FotoMuseum Winterthur (CH) and nominated for the First Book Award MACK Editions (UK), Critical Mass (US), and PDN 30’s (US). His work has been featured in several magazines: Trigger FOMU (BE), Lens Culture (US), Photomonitor (UK), to name a few. Lerma is currently a lecturer in Social Practice & Photography at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam (NL) and a faculty member in Media Studies at Webster Leiden Campus. In the last decade, he served as a faculty member in Photography & Social Justice at the International Center of Photography in New York (US) and as a professor in Photography at Kean University in New Jersey (US). He is the founder of the publishing house Meteoro Editions (US-NL), a platform to create art publications with a focus on projects gravitating around vernacular photography, archives, utopias, and fictional representations of the world.

John Loughlin, MFA, obtained his Master of Fine Arts from the American Film Institute in Directing and was also a Cinematography fellow there. He has a BA in Film and Video Studies and Biology from the University of Michigan. His production work has been primarily as a cinematographer (DP) or as support for the DP. He has shot, gaffed, key gripped, and camera operated for award-winning shorts, commercials, music videos, documentaries, and features. His previous work in education has been primarily as the founding chair of cinematography, a year-long master’s-level program at New York Film Academy. He currently administers intensive production courses he designed at AUC, shoots, consults, edits, and colors.

Noemi Mena Montes, PhD, is a journalist and an expert on migration and intercultural communication. She holds a doctorate degree in Political Communication. Mena Montes has more than ten years of lecturing experience in BA courses in Media Studies at Webster Leiden Campus and BA and MA courses on Communication, Social Media, and Journalism in other Dutch universities (Erasmus and Radboud Universitiet) and in Spain (URJC-Madrid and USAL-Salamanca). She was the head of Media Studies at Webster Leiden Campus and the coordinator of Webstercanal. Mena Montes has worked as a radio journalist in Spain, as a freelance correspondent-researcher in the Middle East, and as a communication advisor for a European political foundation. In 2011, she received the Spanish National Award for best research on Migration Studies in 2011 (Premio Santo Padre Rubio), as well as a prize for the most read article by Latina Communication Journal (2014). Recently, she has been working on investigative journalism projects with the Lighthouse Reports. Nowadays, Mena Montes is a public speaker and researcher in topics related to media literacy, verification of information and fake news, media and migration, media and politics, and strategic communication. She also works as a communication consultant and intercultural communication trainer for NGO's and educational institutions (Erasmus University, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, EUCLID Network, Delitelabs, Re-connact, Refugee Forward, Kompass, Kit Royal Tropical institute). Mena Montes is the co-founder of Re-starter, a foundation that promotes the integration of refugees in the Netherlands and other European countries.

Carlos Roos is a scholar in the fields of art theory and communication studies, as well as a practicing artist with international experience in studio and stage projects. He holds a BA in Art from Universidad Central de Venezuela (VE) and an MA in Philosophy of Art from Leiden University (NL). His current doctoral research (Leiden University and UGent) revolves around critical theory, metaphysics, and aesthetics. Roos is the editorial assistant of Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, and a member of the following scholarly associations: European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS).

Jonathan Talbott is a communications advisor with a specialty in spoken communication and a background in the performing arts.

“I started out in business with a plan to help presenters eliminate ‘Death by PowerPoint’, but it’s gotten a little out of hand. The presenting work led to coaching TEDx talks. I’ve now assisted in the creation of more than 200 of those. Before I knew it I was helping people and organizations with giving pitches, preparing for panel discussions, focusing their small talk at events, planning negotiation communication, and practicing interviews. I spend a fair amount of time talking about goals, strategy and planning, particularly with regard to emotional connection with audiences. I also work with lots of startups on market validation, which really means asking good questions and carefully listening to the answers.”

Talbott is a regular guest lecturer on communications skills at the Delft University of Technology, Utrecht University and Erasmus University.

With an extensive background in photography and visual arts, Matthijs (Matt) Uivel is a keen communicator, writer, art critic, and curator. He holds a master’s degree in (Photographic) Fine Art and primarily works with analog photography techniques. Uivel is also an experienced lecturer, focusing both on technical execution of concepts and creating an engaging context for visual media. From his Amsterdam-based studio in the Netherlands, he currently works with some of the most well-known names in the music business. In addition, he has run a gallery, published books, and collaborated with various artists from all over the world.