Dr Paschalia (Lia) Spyridou is Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Communication at Cyprus University of Technology. She holds a BA in Journalism and Mass Media from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an MA in Communication from the University of Westminster, and received her PhD in Journalism and New Media from the Aristotle University. In 2012 she was awarded a postdoctoral scholarship for her work on participatory journalism. She was a Lecturer at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus, and has taught at the University of Macedonia, the Aristotle University, and the MA program in Journalism Studies of the Hellenic Open University. Her research interests lie in the field of digital journalism studies with an emphasis on how new technologies impact news production and shape politics and democracy. She has published more than 35 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Her work has appeared in Journalism, Digital Journalism, The European Journal of Communication, International Communication Gazette, Future Internet and Journal of European Public Policy among others. She was the local coordinator for two Erasmus+ projects, MATE and MediaLab and collaborated with H2020 RePAST as a researcher. Currently she is coordinating the H2020 DEMOTEC project (GA962553).