Laura Moorhead is an assistant professor at San Francisco State University’s Journalism Department. She works to improve professional and educational practices in the areas of access to research and health information and media and information literacy. She looks for ways to bring together academic and practitioner communities, including journalists and nontraditional content producers, to develop multiple perspectives and substantive evidence for addressing the realms of practice, policy, and academia. Her research focuses on information access and the work of journalists as a potential lever for social change and contributes to a larger intellectual conversation involving issues of equity, inclusion, policy, and the profession of journalism.

Laura worked on Science Surveyor, a project with Stanford University’s School of Engineering and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism designed to help journalists better use and understand research. Through a National Science Foundation grant, Laura helped assess the NIH Public Access Policy’s potential value for the public. Additionally, Laura has worked as a journalist for 20 years, most recently as a contributing editor at PBS Frontline/World and as a senior editor at Wired magazine. She has also worked with IDEO, a global design firm that works with media companies to navigate the future of publishing. Laura holds a PhD from Stanford’s Learning Sciences & Technology Design program, a master’s from Stanford, and a bachelor’s from Ball State University. A list of publications can be found here.

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