Degrees: MA, 2003, New York Univ; BA, 1988, New York Univ

Bio:

Mario A. Murillo is Professor and Chair of the Radio, Television, Film department in the School of Communication, and is co-director of Hofstra’s Center for Civic Engagement. He teaches courses in radio feature and documentary production, radio reporting, media aesthetics, and Latin American media, among other subjects. He also serves as executive producer of Hofstra’s Morning Wake Up Call, the public affairs news/talk program heard on WRHU 88.7FM Radio Hofstra University (www.wrhu.org) every Monday-Friday from 7:00 to 9:00am.

As an educator, broadcaster, researcher, and activist, Mario has committed himself to the long and rich tradition of public interest, community-oriented radio, and considers citizen’s media as a fundamental tool of civic engagement. He has worked in commercial, public, community and university radio for over 27 years. He was a longtime host and producer on WBAI 99.5FM  (www.wbai.org) Pacifica Radio (www.pacifica.org) in New York, where he served as director of Public Affairs Programming from 1989-1998 and anchored its long-running morning show Wake Up Call for over ten years years. An award-winning radio feature producer, he has reported regularly for NPR's Latino USA, served as guest host on WNYC New York Public Radio’s The Brian Lehrer Show (www.wnyc.org), and has written a regular column for El Diario/La Prensa, New York’s largest Spanish-language daily.

In 2008-2009, Mario spent six months in Colombia, as a Fulbright Scholar, where he worked in the Communication Department of the Universidad Pontifícia La Javeriana in Bogotá, alongside its radio station Javeriana Estereo. His research work was carried out in close collaboration with the Communication Committee of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, ACIN, and focused on the strategic uses of communication of the indigenous movement in Colombia.

He is the author of Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest and Destabilization (Seven Stories, 2004), and Islands of Resistance: Puerto Rico, Vieques and U.S. Policy (Seven Stories, 2001). Mario has studied and written about community media, both in the United States and Latin America for many years, his articles and essays published in academic journals and collected essays in the U.S. and abroad.
In July 1999 and August 2000, he served as visiting professor at the School of Communication at the Autonomous University of Asunción in Paraguay, where he taught radio journalism classes. He has also conducted radio production workshops at conferences and seminars, both in the United States and throughout Latin America. In the past, he has taught radio production and media studies courses at New York University, the New School for Social Research, and the City College of the City University of New York.

He has a B.A. degree in International Politics and Journalism from New York University, and an M.A. degree in Media Ecology, also from New York University.