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Lori Beckstead Headshot

Lori Beckstead

Associate Professor, Media Production (On Sabbatical)
OfficeRCC124
Phoneext 556030

On Sabbatical

Education: 
BSc, University of Waterloo
BAA, Toronto Metropolitan University
BEd, OISE/University of Toronto
MA, University of Technology Sydney

Areas of Expertise: 

Labs:
Allan Slaight Radio Institute, Director

Lori Beckstead is associate professor in the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University where she currently teaches courses in podcasting, radio, and sound studies. She is the co-author of Podcast or Perish: Peer Review and Knowledge Creation for the 21st Century (Bloomsbury 2024) along with Ian M. Cook and Hannah McGregor, and the co-editor of Podcast Studies: Practice into Theory (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2025) along with Dario Llinares.

Her research interests include investigating diversity in audio media such as podcasting and sports talk radio, interrogating the foundational structures of podcasting as a medium, and exploring how podcasting can be leveraged as an innovative method of knowledge creation and peer review. Her work is often disseminated via ‘alternate’ means such as purpose-built interactive machines, interactive installations, and podcasts. Over the years at TMU she has developed and taught courses in digital media production and visual design, audio post production, broadcast history, and broadcast journalism. Notably, Lori spearheaded the course Media for International Development in which her students pitched and produced media projects to assist NGOs such as AMREF Health Africa with their development projects and traveled to their field sites in locations including Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Honduras.

She holds a Digital Media Certificate from OCADU and has exhibited her photography at the OCADU gallery. Lori is the recipient of the TMU-wide Curricular Innovation Award (2005) for her work in connecting media students in three different countries to work collaboratively on a serialized audio fiction piece– what would shortly become known as a ‘podcast’–as well as the Dean’s Teaching Award (2013-2014). She served as associate chair of the RTA School of Media from 2010-2014.