Mario Murillo

Vice Dean and Professor

Lawrence Herbert School of Communication

Mario Murillo has been serving as a Professor of Communication and Latin American Studies at Hofstra University, and the Vice Dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication. He has taught a variety of courses in Radio Journalism and Production, Media Studies, and Latin American Studies. A media scholar and award-winning journalist, he has been an active member of the Advisory Boards of both Hofstra’s Center for Civic Engagement and the Center for “Race” Culture and Social Justice, through which he has worked on a variety of community projects in collaboration with local, grassroots organizations.

In his over 30-years working in the radio industry, he has served as Program Director, director of Public Affairs programming, and a host and producer at WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York, was a feature correspondent for NPR’s Latino USA, served as a regular
guest host on WNYC New York Public Radio, and reported for WINS 1010AM. He has been hosting a weekly, live radio show “Rumba Therapy” on WIOX Community Radio in Roxbury, in the Central Catskills region of New York, and is a faculty advisor and producer at WRHU 88.7FM, Hofstra University’s award-winning, student-run, community-licensed radio station.

He was a 2008-2009 Fulbright Scholar in Colombia, where he taught at the Universidad Pontificia la Javeriana in Bogotá in its department of social communication. As a journalist, radio documentarian, writer and researcher, he has focused much of his attention on the cultural and social role public interest, community-oriented radio play in local and national contexts, and considers citizen’s media to be a fundamental tool of cultural affirmation, artistic expression, civic engagement, and political participation. Of Puerto Rican and Colombian descent, he was born and currently lives in New York City.