Community Media/IAN PRINGLE
About Me
Ian Pringle, Specialist, Media - Commonwealth of Learning
Ian has worked with community and public media for the past twenty years, in Canada, where he was born and raised, and later in South Asia and internationally. Ian studied English and communications at McGill University in Montreal, where he also began his long association with community radio. He lived in Vancouver from 1991 to 1997 working with a variety of media, including radio, video and the emerging internet. Then, as now, the focus on Ian's work has been on using local media as tools for empowerment and community development.
In 1998, Ian moved to Nepal to take up a post with the Centre for International Studies and Cooperation as an advisor to Radio Sagarmatha, South Asia's first independent radio broadcaster. In subsequent years, he gradually devoted more and more time to new community media in rural Nepal, in south India and other countries in the region. In 2002 Ian joined UNESCO's Regional Bureau for Communication and Information in New Delhi, managing programmes in community media and new information and communication technologies (ICT). In 2006, he began an assignment at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to co-ordinate the organisation's community multimedia initiatives, with a focus on scaling-up community media centres in Africa.
Ian is a skilled and experienced media specialist with broad international experience and strong interests in innovation, social change and policy environments. He has contributed to numerous publications relating to media, new ICT and various aspects of development. In 2007, Ian returned to academic study, beginning a Masters degree in mass communication with the University of Leicester (England).