Carolina Acosta-Alzuru receives 2024-25 Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award

Dr. Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, a professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, has received a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to conduct research in Turkey, furthering her work studying Turkish television dramas. 

In fall 2024, Acosta-Alzuru (MA ’96, PhD ’99) will spend three and a half months in the country, immersing herself inside the Turkish television content industry to examine how it deals with the tensions between its Turkish and global audiences, as well as the coexistence and future of traditional television and digital platforms. 

Distinguished Scholar Awards are considered the most prestigious appointments in the Fulbright Scholar Program. The awards are annually open to scholars with more than seven years experience in their discipline area(s). 

“This is huge for me,” said Acosta-Alzuru. “The Turkish television season coincides exactly with the U.S. academic calendar, so I’m always running back and forth. I’ve always craved an extended amount of time (in Turkey) so that I can do this correctly and start working on the book that I plan to write.” 

For more than 25 years, Acosta-Alzuru has studied the links between media, culture and society, focusing specifically on melodramatic television series in Latin America and Turkey, which are two of the world’s largest exporters of such series. Her work has been cited more than 1,100 times, and she is the author of three books focusing on telenovelas. 

“I’m trying to unravel, all the time, what I see as a tight braid that has three wires — media, culture and society,” said Acosta-Alzuru. 

At Grady College, Acosta-Alzuru teaches courses in public relations campaigns, cultural studies and qualitative methods. She has won several awards for her teaching and work, including the 2015 AEJMC-Scripps Howard Foundation Journalism and Mass Communication Teacher of the Year for the United States, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professorship, which is the University of Georgia’s highest teaching award, and Grady College’s John Holliman Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award. 

“I’ve been dreaming about being a Fulbright Scholar since I was a kid,” said Acosta-Alzuru. “I can’t believe I got it. I’m just so amazed.”

Author: Jackson Schroeder, Jackson.Schroeder@uga.edu