Marco Scalvini is a Senior Lecturer in the Communications and Media Programme at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He teaches Communication Research Methods at LCC and, in 2025–26, co-convenes Humanitarian Communication with Professor Lilie Chouliaraki at the London School of Economics.
Marco's research asks who gets to be visible and who decides. He studies how corporations and platforms shape the way we encounter distant crises, from advertising campaigns that take sides in geopolitical conflicts to AI-generated imagery used in humanitarian appeals. His most recent work examines how corporations acquire humanitarian authority while the communities they claim to serve have no means of holding them accountable.
He is the author of 'Brand Activism: Advertising and the Ethics of Visibility' (Routledge, 2024). His forthcoming 'Consumer Activism: Legibility, Resistance and Justice' (Routledge, 2026) examines how consumers in the Global South contest corporate power through practices of resistance and refusal. His research has been published in 'New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Media, Culture & Society, Social Media + Society' and 'The BMJ', among others.
Before entering academia, Marco worked in the advertising and communications industry and as a consultant for organisations including Netflix, the NHS, Saatchi & Saatchi, UNESCO in Bethlehem (Palestine), the United Nations in Kosovo, and the G8/G20 Summits during the 2008 global financial crisis.