María Moya

Maria De Moya, PhD is an associate professor of communication and chair of the Public Relations and Advertising program. She is a member of the university’s President’s Diversity Council and represents the college in Faculty Council’s Committee on Equity, Inclusion and Diversity.

De Moya’s teaching focuses on social change communication, professional responsibility, law and ethics, and public relations and advertising efforts to engage ethnic communities. In her classes, students learn to design campaigns and research strategic communication applied to social issues such as student debt, mental health, diversity, equity and inclusion, civic engagement and media representation.

Her research centers on ethnic and international strategic communications, exploring practices that cut across public diplomacy, advocacy, political communication and tourism. Her work is published in a variety of scholarly journals including Public Relations Review, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Public Relations Inquiry and the Hague Journal of Diplomacy. Her book, "Latin American Diasporas in Public Diplomacy" (co-edited with Vanessa Bravo of Elon University), was published by the Palgrave Series in Global Public Diplomacy in 2021.

This international focus extends to her role as associate director for regional initiatives – Latin America for DePaul’s Global Engagement office. In this role, she is charged with building and maintaining relationships for programs, research, student exchanges and more, with partner institutions throughout the region. Additionally, she is an affiliated faculty with the Latin American and Latino Studies program, as well as a member of the Center for Latino Research advisory board.

She brings to DePaul a wealth of professional experience as a former journalist and public relations specialist, working in the public diplomacy and AID sectors with international government and not-for-profit partners.

De Moya holds a PhD in mass communication from the University of Florida, and a MA in business and economic journalism from New York University, where she was a Fulbright scholar. She completed her BA in mass communication at Santo Domingo Catholic University, a private catholic university in the Dominican Republic. She was selected as a fellow with AEJMC's Institute for Diverse Leadership in 2019, as well as for the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations in 2015. She served the college as director for the Latino Media and Communication program (2016-2019) and academic director for the MA in Public Relations and Advertising (2018-2020).