Dr. Marco Bardus’ short biography

His interest in research started in 2005, after working as an intern and planner at the Savonlinna Institute for Regional Development and Research, directed by Dr. Pellervo Kokkonen, within the University of Eastern Finland (formerly known as University of Joensuu).

After his Finnish experience, he went back to Italy to complete his Master’s in Public Relations at the University of Udine in Gorizia,  under the supervision of Prof. Renata Kodilja, with whom he collaborated as a research assistant until June 2008.

In June 2008, Marco moved to the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland, where he worked as a research and teaching assistant of Prof. L. Suzanne Suggs, the head of the BeCHANGE research group, within the Institute for Public Communication.

Between 2008 and 2012, Marco gained significant experience as a researcher in Health communication and as a teaching assistant in Social Marketing, working towards his Ph.D. thesis under the supervision of Prof. Suggs. His dissertation investigated the use of emails and SMS to promote physical activity in UK workplaces. As part of his fieldwork, in 2011, he spent a semester at the University of Nottingham, supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. At Nottingham, he was supervised by Prof. Holly Blake. Marco obtained his Ph.D. in Communication Sciences in April 2012.

Between 2012 and 2014, Marco continued working as a postdoctoral researcher in the BeCHANGE Research Group, and assumed a new role within the European Journalism Observatory (EJO), Institute of Media and Journalism. Within EJO he collaborated on the social media marketing strategy and was in charge of organizing social media training courses for EJO editors and for Ph.D. students. He collaborated with Prof. Stephan Russ-Mohl (USI) and Prof. Vinzenz Wyss, from the Zuercher Fachhochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (ZHAW).

In 2014, Marco obtained an Early Postdoc mobility grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation which allowed him to spend about two years as a research associate and research fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School, under the supervision of Dr. Jane Smith and Prof. Charles Abraham.

In January 2016, he started his academic career as an assistant professor in health promotion and community health, at the prestigious American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon. At AUB, he spent about six years, expanding his research portfolio in digital health and teaching portfolio in health communication and social marketing.

With a looming economic crisis and growing security concerns in Lebanon, and after miraculously surviving the explosion at the Beirut port in August 2020, Marco decided to move to the UK with his family.

In November 2021, Marco joined Leeds Trinity University, a small college in West Yorkshire, where he spent two semesters focusing on his teaching activities – while still collaborating with AUB remotely.

In June 2022, Marco joined the Institute of Applied Health Research at the University of Birmingham.