Ellen Wartella

Who is Ellen Wartella?

Ellen A. Wartella is a leading scholar of the role of media in children’s development. Professor of Communication Studies and of Psychology at Northwestern University since 2010, she was Executive Vice Chancellor, Provost and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, from 2004–2009. Wartella was dean of the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin from 1993–2004, where she also held the Walter Cronkite Regents Chair, the Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair, and the UNESCO Chair in International Communication.

She received a B.A. with honors from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. She then taught at Ohio State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before assuming the Texas deanship.

The author or editor of 12 books and approximately 175 book chapters, research articles, technical reports and research papers, Wartella is a co-principal Investigator on a 5-year multi-site research project entitled: “IRADS Collaborative Research: Influence of Digital Media on Very Young Children” funded by the National Research Foundation.