Harry Dugmore

Prof Harry Dugmore is the Director of the Centre for Health Journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Harry co-ordinates the Honours programmes at the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes, and supervises PhD and Masters research in the fields of health communication, sexuality and health, and digital journalism. He has had a long-standing interest in the media’s ability to influence health behaviours and shape health identities. In the 1990s, Harry co-wrote the first four seasons of the Soul City TV series was, from 2001 to 2006, a coordinator of Khomanani, government’s HIV, AIDS and TB behaviour change communication campaign. His research interest include media representations of obesity and the way Non-Communicable Diseases are covered in media, health journalism in the digital era, media business models, and understanding the media’s role in shaping sexualities and sexual identities. Harry is Deputy Chair of the Board of Grocott's Mail, South Africa's oldest independent newspaper and the Eastern Cape coordinator of the South African Editors Forum (SANEF). He was, until 2010, the MTN Chair of Media and Mobile Communications at Rhodes. He is currently on the steering committee of the Highway Africa conference, the largest annual conference of African Journalists. Harry has a PhD in history from University of Witwatersrand