Shayna Plaut

Areas of interest

Journalism, transnationalism, migration, human rights, media theory, nationalism, and social justice.

Education

• PhD, Education, University of British Columbia
• MA, Humanities, University of Chicago
• BA, Political Science, Antioch College

Biography

Shayna Plaut operates at the nexus of academia, journalism, activism and motherhood. Specifically, she is interested in how people represent themselves in their own media, with a particular interest in peoples who do not fit neatly within the traditional notions of the nation-state. Shayna has researched and engaged with Romani media, migrant media and Indigenous media in Canada, the US and Europe for nearly 20 years. Since 2014, Shayna has served as the Research Manager for Strangers at Home and “Fixing Fixers” both projects of the Global Reporting Centre. As a Fulbright and Vanier scholar, she has lived and worked in Hungary and the Balkans. Since 2004, Shayna has developed and taught a large array of courses focused on the framing of social justice and human rights including at Simon Fraser University where she served as the Simons Research Fellow from 2015–2016. Shayna has also taught at Columbia College in Chicago and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University. In 2017 Shayna relocated to Winnipeg where she continues to teach and research (and engage with) on human rights, migration and the ethics and methods of human rights work (research, practice and praxis) and is currently working on a book with academics, artists, journalists and practitioners on the messy ethics of human rights work. As an educator, researcher and journalist, Shayna has served as a consultant for the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the Board for the University of Arizona Masters of Human Rights Practice as well as a variety of migrant and human rights organizations.