Andrea Hickerson
University of Mississippi
Andrea Hickerson, Ph.D., is Dean and Professor in the School of Journalism and New Media, and Director of the Center for Information Advantage and Effectiveness at the University of Mississippi. Previously, she was an associate dean in the College of Information and Communications and Director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina. Before that, she served as Director of the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.
Dr. Hickerson has extensive experience in program development, curricular innovation, grants and fundraising. She is a strong advocate for experiential learning. While at the University of Mississippi, she established a student-run integrated marketing agency and the Mississippi Media Lab, a public affairs-focused experimental storytelling lab. During the Spring 2026 semester, she is piloting a new course on “Digital Investigations.”
Dr. Hickerson’s research interests include media forensics and information quality. She routinely collaborates with interdisciplinary teams, including experts in artificial intelligence, law, computer science, and cybersecurity. Since 2018, she has collaborated on the design and implementation of “DeFake,” a deepfake detection platform for journalists that has received two rounds of funding from the National Science Foundation.
She is co-author of Fake-Checking: A Journalist’s Guide to Deepfakes (Routledge, 2025) and co-editor of PROMISE: Promoting AI’s Safe Usage for Elections (Springer, 2025).
Dr. Hickerson has extensive experience in program development, curricular innovation, grants and fundraising. She is a strong advocate for experiential learning. While at the University of Mississippi, she established a student-run integrated marketing agency and the Mississippi Media Lab, a public affairs-focused experimental storytelling lab. During the Spring 2026 semester, she is piloting a new course on “Digital Investigations.”
Dr. Hickerson’s research interests include media forensics and information quality. She routinely collaborates with interdisciplinary teams, including experts in artificial intelligence, law, computer science, and cybersecurity. Since 2018, she has collaborated on the design and implementation of “DeFake,” a deepfake detection platform for journalists that has received two rounds of funding from the National Science Foundation.
She is co-author of Fake-Checking: A Journalist’s Guide to Deepfakes (Routledge, 2025) and co-editor of PROMISE: Promoting AI’s Safe Usage for Elections (Springer, 2025).