Deborah Barcella

Deborah Barcella is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Media and Journalism (IMeG) and the coordinator of the Bachelor in Communication at the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), where she earned her PhD in Communication Sciences in 2025.

Her research lies at the intersection of web history, media history, and marketing. Her doctoral project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), explored the early history of the World Wide Web through archival research at CERN, with a specific focus on how communication and branding strategies contributed to the promotion and public adoption of the Web in the 1990s. The findings of her dissertation have been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at various national and international conferences.

She is currently involved as a postdoctoral researcher in the SNSF-funded Agorà project, which aims to disseminate the history of the Web among the Swiss population. Developed in collaboration with the SUPSI Institute of Design, Research and Innovation, the project promotes dialogue between research and society through participatory activities, digital content (in partnership with RSI – the Swiss public broadcaster), and public events.

Deborah serves as Early-Career Scholar Representative for the Communication History Division of the International Communication Association (ICA), and she has been a member of the organizing committee for several international academic initiatives, including the Documentary Summer School (Locarno Film Festival) and the ECREA Communication History Workshop 2025 (hosted at CERN).

She teaches courses in Communication Classics, and during her PhD, she also served as a teaching assistant for Social Media Management, Media History, and Digital Cultures.

She was a visiting scholar at the Schulich School of Business (York University, Canada), under the supervision of Prof. Markus Giesler.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences (specialization in Corporate Communication, 2017) and a Master of Science in Communication and Economics (major in Marketing, 2019), both awarded by USI with the ABB Prize for best GPA.