The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is pleased to announce Dr. Jennifer R. Henrichsen, of Washington State University, as this year’s winner of the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Early Career Woman Scholar Award.
Reviewers described Henrichsen as an “award-winner-level candidate whose profile combines scholarly excellence, productivity, impact, and future promise,” with one reviewer also citing her impressive international outreach in journalism.
Henrichsen is an Assistant Professor at Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Senior Personnel with the VICEROY Northwest Institute for Cybersecurity Education and Research, and an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and the University of Pennsylvania’s Media, Inequality & Change Center. A former Fulbright Research Scholar, she holds an MA from the University of Geneva and an MA and PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I’m honored to receive this prestigious award,” Henrichsen said. “It’s a meaningful recognition of my scholarship, and it affirms the urgency and importance of this research at a time when journalism and democracy are facing complex and intensifying challenges.”
Henrichsen’s research examines how structural conditions and evolving forms of risk shape journalistic work, and what those pressures mean for journalism and democratic life. She has produced more than 30 publications, including three books and 14 peer-reviewed journal articles in outlets such as Digital Journalism and the International Journal of Communication. Her work has been cited by the U.S. Government and the United Nations, and her research has been profiled in outlets including The New York Times and NPR.
Henrichsen has delivered more than 80 conference presentations and invited lectures across North America, Europe, and Asia, and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship — the first in Washington State University history.
The Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Early Career Woman Scholar Award honors an early-career woman-identifying scholar who demonstrates outstanding research and potential for future scholarship. It is sponsored by the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication at Florida International University and the AEJMC Commission on the Status of Women.
Henrichsen will be honored with a cash award and a plaque at AEJMC’s New Orleans Conference during its keynote session on Wednesday, Aug. 5, from 5:15-6:45 p.m. The award will be presented by Dr. Bey-Ling Sha, president of AEJMC.
About AEJMC
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is a nonprofit organization comprised of educators, students and practitioners from around the globe. Founded in 1912 by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer, the first president (1912-13) of the American Association of Teachers of Journalism, as it was then known, AEJMC is the oldest and largest alliance of journalism and mass communication educators and administrators at the college level. AEJMC’s mission is to promote the highest possible standards for journalism and mass communication education, to encourage the widest possible range of communication research, to encourage the implementation of a multi-cultural society in the classroom and curriculum, and to defend and maintain freedom of communication in an effort to achieve better professional practice, a better-informed public, and wider human understanding.