Dr Sameera Durrani
Senior Lecturer
Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA)
School of the Arts and Media
I am a public diplomacy scholar, a consumer insights consultant, an award winning educator, and a senior lecturer, (Level C) at the School of the Arts and Media, UNSW. I teach industry - focused Work Integrated Learning subjects in communication strategy and public diplomacy and place branding at the postgraduate and undergraduate level
The excellence and strength of my work has been recognised in the form of awards received from Australian and international, academic as well as industry forums. My pedagogical designs have been recognised for their excellence in encouraging diversity and inclusion practices, by the Asia Pacific Public Relations Research and Education Network (2022). I won the Public Relations Institute Australia ( PRIA) Golden Target Award (Gold) for Early Career Educator (2022), for innovative, industry centric pedagogy. I was awarded Top Faculty Paper Awards by the globally prestigious communication research organisation, International Communication Association (ICA)'s Visual Communication Division and the Public Diplomacy Interest Group in two consecutive years (2024 and 2025). In 2025, my mentoring practices were recognised by B&T Women in Media, with a Mentor Award, and I was ranked third in B&T's list of Best Mentors in Australia's communication industry.
As a former journalist and sub-editor with three postgraduate degrees in communication research, I am keenly interested in the way stories shape our perceptions. I bring my knowledge of visual rhetoric to unpack the strategic implications of narratives, and the manner in which they influence long term outcomes for people, places, and organizations. As a researcher and as a consultant, I specialise in risk assessment, with a particular focus on the role played by culture in the design of communication strategy.
I have a demonstrated track record of leading and mentoring teams in both academia and industry, in Australian as well as transnational contexts. As an industry consultant working with firms from Australia and United Kingdom, I bring my interdisciplinary knowledge to design strategy from a cultural insights perspective, for for clients such as AusTrade, Tourism Australia, and the Australian Department of Health.
E-mail
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
Durrani, S (2022). Investigating Cultural Insights: A New Methodology for Inclusive Social Science Research. School of Communication Research Grant. (5,000 AUD)
Durrani, S and Kim, S. (2024). How does China perceive Australian soft power? Exploring regional playbooks of nation branding. UTS Australia China Research Institute Grant (ACRI) (5,000 AUD).
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Research
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Top Faculty Paper Award Public Diplomacy Interest Group, International Communication Association (ICA) |
2025 |
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Top Faculty Paper Award (Runner up) Visual Communication Division, International Communication Association (ICA) |
2024 |
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Top Faculty Paper, APPRREN Conference, 2021 (Asia Pacific Public Relations Research and Education Network). |
2021 |
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Teaching
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Winner, Public Relations Institute (PRIA) Early Career Teaching Award |
2022 |
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B&T Women in Media Award (Mentor) |
2025 |
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Journal Publications:
Radina, A., & Durrani, S. (2026). Malign, benign, and tolerable: Authoritarianism and the spectrum of likeability. Social Semiotics.
Durrani, S. (2025). The ‘Good’ Autocrat: The semiotics of desirable authoritarianism. International Journal of Communication, 19(2025), 766–786.
Durrani, S. (2023) What happens when a country bleeds soft power? Conceptualising ‘Negative Watch’ – towards an epistemology of negative and adversarial branding. Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 19 (4), 1-20.
Durrani, S. (2022). Damsels in distress? Gender and negative place branding. Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-022-00260-8.
Durrani, S. (2020). Disagree and you shall be valued: A semiotic examination of how photojournalism constructs ‘valuable’ Iranian bodies across Time. Social Semiotics https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2020.1779461.
Durrani, S. (2020). What makes an image worth a thousand words? Teaching strategic visual analysis and synthesis via semiotics. Communication Teacher https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2020.1862269.
Peer Reviewed Book Chapters
Durrani, S. (2025). When soft power matters not: The Priam Syndrome. In Public Diplomacy in Authoritarian Regimes, edited by Richter, C., & Demir, V. Palgrave Macmillan.
Durrani, S. (2025). Schisms in nation brands: Identity fissures, image fractures, and reputational fragmentation. In Public Diplomacy Handbook, edited by Aday, S. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, pp.391-405.
Durrani, S. (2020). Previewing news stories: How contextual cohesion contributes to the creation of news narratives. Image-Centric Practices in the Contemporary Media Sphere, edited by Stockl, H., Caple, H. & Pflaeging, J. Routledge, pp. 123-145.
Durrani, S. (2017). Absence in visual narratives: The story of Iran and Pakistan across time. In Conspicuous by Absence: Exploring Silence and Absence in Discourse, edited by Schroter, M. & Taylor, C. Acholter & Taylor, pp.65-93.
Tariq, A., and Durrani, S. (2017). One size does not fit all: The importance of contextually sensitive mHealth strategies for frontline female health workers. In mHealth in Asia; Contexts and Interventions. Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-024-1251-2_2.