Director of the RISJ to step down in September 2024

Rasmus Kleis Neilsen, the Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ), will step down at the end of September 2024. 

In October he will be joining the University of Copenhagen as a Professor in the Department of Communication, but will continue to collaborate with colleagues at the University of Oxford over the next few years. In a new position as Senior Research Associate at the RISJ, Rasmus will continue to play an important role in several projects, including the Digital News Report, AI and the Future of News, and Leadership Development Programmes. 

The RISJ is part of DPIR and is accountable to the Department’s General Purposes Committee and the joint Heads of Department, Nick Owen and Petra Schleiter. 

In a statement highlighting Rasmus’s ‘remarkable abilities’, Nick Owen said:

"Rasmus has taken the Reuters Institute to new heights since he took over as Director six years ago. It is thanks to his great skill, leadership and dedication that it holds such a high reputation for the rigour and relevance of its work."

As evidence of these ‘new heights’, the RISJ’s Journalist Programmes have grown from 20 to more than 200, while the number of participants in the Leadership Development Programmes has swelled from 32 to over 200, since Rasmus became Director in 2018. In this time, the RISJ has launched ground-breaking work on artificial intelligence, climate change, and diversity in news leadership. This has enhanced the RISJ’s reputation, which is reflected in a growth in income from £3 million to £4.5 million. 

When announcing his decision to step down, Rasmus called the RISJ ‘something special – a rare space for frank discussion around the future of journalism’. He then went on to hail the Institute’s ‘commitment to independence, integrity, and freedom from bias’.