Christoph Mergerson

Christoph Mergerson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. He joined Merrill College as a visiting assistant professor in Fall 2021 and was appointed to the rank of assistant professor the following year.

He is the lead instructor for Merrill College’s journalism history course, and his research and teaching interests also include weather and environmental journalism, trust in news and the well-being of journalists. His research focuses on the evolution of broadcast meteorology in the post-broadcast era, the societal implications of broadcast and digital meteorology, and the history of women in television meteorology in the Space Age. 

Prior to academia, Mergerson was a media policy researcher with the Brookings Institution in Washington, a radio producer in New Orleans and a public affairs manager for a disaster preparedness agency in New Orleans. He was also an intern in the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy at the National Weather Service’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. His doctorate is in media studies from Rutgers University, and he also holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from California State University, Northridge, with a master’s degree in public affairs from The University of Texas at Austin.