Doctoral Candidate Luis Rodrigo Pesce Villagómez
Luis Rodrigo Pesce Villagómez is a doctoral student at the HGGS and the Heidelberg Centre for Ibero-American Studies and a member of the HCIAS doctoral programme ‘Communication and Society in Ibero-America’. He is a scholarship holder of the Mexican National Council for Humanities, Sciences and Technology (CONAHCYT).
His research deals with violence against journalists and communicators in Mexico, with a particular focus on the correlation with public communication by criminal organisations via social media, the impact on freedom of expression, the right to information and self-censorship, and the measures taken by journalists to protect themselves from this violence. His doctoral project entitled ‘Criminal Public Communication via Social Media, Violence against Journalists, and Self-Censorship in Mexico: Challenges and Opportunities’ is supervised by HCIAS Jun-Prof. Dr Alejandro Ecker.
Luis completed a Master of Arts in International Media Studies at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, DW Akademie and the University of Bonn. His master's thesis on the characteristics of violence against journalists in Mexico was the result of a collaboration with the NGO ARTICLE 19 México y Centroamérica. In it, Luis examined the messages and target groups that can be found in the social media posts of criminal organisations. Luis holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, Queretaro Campus (Tecnológico de Monterrey).
As a journalist, translator and copywriter, Luis has experience in various areas of print and digital media. In his role as Senior Industry Analyst & Journalist at Mexico Business Publishing, he participated in the creation of six yearbooks on the main sectors of the Mexican economy and published several analyses and news articles for the company's digital editions. He has also collaborated with Capital Analytics Associates and Confíe Holding as a freelance editor and translator. He also completed an internship as an editorial assistant and wrote articles for various print and digital publications on the international relations of the Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Querétaro.
