Margaret Gallagher

Margaret Gallagher is an Irish freelance researcher and writer specialising in gender and media. She has carried out research, development and evaluation projects for the United Nations Statistics Division, UNIFEM, UNESCO, the International Labour Office, the Council of Europe, the European Commission and the European Audiovisual Observatory.

Gallagher sits on the editorial boards of International Communication Gazette, Feminist Media Studies and, Communication for Development and Social Change.

Education Gallagher gained a M.Sc. in education from the University of Dayton in 1972, and her Ed.D. in 1978 from Western Michigan University.

Career Gallagher began her career, in the 1970s, researching the use of technology in education, eventually becoming deputy head of the Audiovisual Media Research Group at the Open University. She moved into gender and media research, including participation rates and portrayal of women in the media, in the early 1980s.

In 1986 Gallagher established the European Commission's Steering Committee for Equal Opportunities in Broadcasting, which she coordinated until 1990. From 1989 to 1999 she worked on the "Prix Niki", the European Commission's biennial television prize for innovative portrayal of women and men. She has also acted as a consultant to a consortium of five European broadcasters for the development of an audiovisual training kit Screening Gender (1997-2000), and to the World Association for Christian Communication (WAAC) for the second Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) (2000).

Gallagher is currently Key Expert on Media Monitoring for the European Neighbourhood Barometer project "Opinion Polling and Media Monitoring" (EuropeAid, European Commission).