Kay Weaver

C. Kay Weaver is the chair of the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Design and a professor of Public Relations. Her research focuses on the social-cultural role and impacts of public relations and strategic communication in its many forms, from corporate for-profit and government, to non-profit, non-government, charity and activist communication. 

A qualitative researcher, she explores how public communication leverages political and social interests, discourses and actions. Over her research career, she has had an additional focus on how violence, and especially violence against women, is represented in the media and in strategic communication campaigns.

Having gained over US$3 million in external award funding as, variously, principal investigator and a member of grant-winning teams, she is co-author of Cameras in the Commons (1990), Women Viewing Violence (1992), and Violence and the Media (2003), and is co-editor of Critical Readings: Violence and the Media (2006), Public Relations in Global Contexts (2011), and The Routledge Companion to Public Relations (2023).

She has published numerous book chapters as well as articles in Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Inquiry,International Journal of Advertising, Media Culture & Society, New Media and Society, Information, Communication & Society, Feminist Media Studies and the Journal of Applied Communication Research. Kay is on the editorial boards of Public Relations Inquiry, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Communication Management, Media International Australia, and Communication Research and Practice. 

Kay joined the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Design from the University of Waikato in New Zealand where she served as Professor of Management Communication, Dean of the School of Graduate Research, and Pro Vice-Chancellor of Postgraduate Research.

Born in England, Kay gained her bachelors and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Stirling in Scotland.