Professor Thomas R. Lansner teaches on international media and policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is an experienced journalism and media educator and trainer who worked as an international correspondent in Africa and Asia and has served as a consultant to numerous NGOs.
Contact Number: +31 [0] 641 685 450
Lansner has taught at Columbia since 1994, and served as assistant dean there from 1999-2001. He has also taught at New York University and at Sciences Po Paris.
He has served as an election observer and consultant in several countries, including Gabon, Nigeria, South Africa and South Korea, and helped launch election media monitoring efforts in Slovakia. He led seminars on election coverage for Palestinian journalists as part of a UNDPI program at Columbia University [1995-2000], performed election media training in Ghana and Romania, and has offered many trainings in media advocacy in Africa, Asia, Europe and the USA for the Open Society Institute, UNDP, Freedom House, and others. He has served as a presenter, panelist and facilitator at numerous workshops and conferences.
For ten years until 1990, Lansner was a correspondent, principally in Africa and Asia, for the London Observer, the Guardian, Far Eastern Economic Review, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and other media outlets. Based from Uganda, India, and then the Philippines, he covered numerous elections, wars and myriad civil conflicts, as well as political, economic and social developments in countries across Africa and the Asia-Pacific.
Lansner writes regularly on international affairs. His recent publications include Countries at the Crossroads: Kenya, [ Freedom House, 2012 forthcoming]; Countries at the Crossroads: Zambia, Freedom House, 2011; Countries at the Crossroads: Kenya, 2010; “No Empty Vessel: Media Roles in Human Rights,” in Non-State Actors in the Human Rights Universe, Kumarian Press, 2006; “The Media and Information for Democracy,” in Democratic Reform in Africa, James Curry, 2006; “Covering the Waves,” Northwestern Journal of International Affairs, Fall 2006; “Reports of War,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs,Winter/Spring 2006; “Media and Human Rights,” in The Essentials of Human Rights, London: Hodding, 2005; and The Morningside Post, blog entries, various dates.
Lansner’s online seminar War Reporting: Romance and Reality has been praised as a top online journalism course.