Patricia Aufderheide

Patricia Ann Aufderheide is a scholar and public intellectual on media and social change, and an expert on fair use in media creation and scholarship. She is a university professor at American University in Washington, D.C., where she has worked since 1989. She founded and led the Center for Social Media in 2000, which in 2015 Caty Borum then led and renamed the Center for Media & Social Impact. She has received multiple awards and honors for her journalism and scholarship, including 2026 induction into the National Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Silver Circle for “significant and impactful contributions to the television industry,” the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1994, Fulbright Research Fellowships in 1995 (Brazil), 2017 (Australia) and 2024 (South Korea), and numerous journalism and career awards.

Education and career

Aufderheide attended the University of Minnesota, where she received a Ph.D. in history, writing her dissertation on "Order and Violence: Social Deviance and Social Control in Brazil, 1780-1840".

She was a cultural editor at In These Times newspaper between 1978 and 1985, and a senior editor thereafter until 2025, when she became editor emerita. In 1981-82, she was a senior editor at American Film magazine. In 1985-86, she worked for the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, focused on public interest issues in telecommunication policy, and particularly the effects on working and poor people of telephone divestiture. Since 1989, she has taught at American University in Washington, D.C., where she became associate professor in 1994, full professor in 1998, and University Professor in 2009. She has been a visiting professor at University of Brasília, Duke University, University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Minnesota, Queensland University of Technology, and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.