IMME was founded in 1999 on the initiative of Dr. Andreas Sophocleous. Over the years it organized scientific conferences and seminars on the role of the media, the history of the Cypriot press and EU policies in the field of audiovisual media. It supported the participation of journalism students in seminars held at EU institutions and held exhibitions and honorary events for Cypriot journalists and literary figures. It has published 21 monographs and has contributed to the publication of dozens of books with collaborating publishing houses.
Andreas Sophocleous
Professor Sophocleous served as the IMME’s Director until 2015 and as its Honorary President and member of the Board until his death in 2018. He began his career as a teacher and later served as a Senior Officer and Director of the Press and Information Office of the Republic of Cyprus between 1969 and 1995. He taught Journalism at Intercollege and later the University of Nicosia. His research interests focused on the History and Geography of Cyprus, the Cyprus Problem, the History of the Cypriot Press and Cypriot Literature of the Nineteenth Century. He was a prolific researcher and writer; his six volumes on the History of the Cypriot Press covering the period 1878-1960 and 1960-2010 are considered the most significant record of the field. In 2010 Dr Sophocleous was honoured by the Athanasios Botsis Foundation for the Promotion of Journalism and in 2011 he was awarded the National Literary Prize of the Republic of Cyprus’ Ministry of Education and Culture.
George Pavlides
In the period 2015-2021 the Institute was headed by George Pavlides, Assistant Professor at the Department of Communications of the University of Nicosia and until 2020 chairman of the Committee on Journalistic Ethics. George’s latest book (published in 2021; in Greek) is titled On Journalistic Ethics: www.pavlidesgeorge.com
Soula Hadjikyriacou
Soula Hadjikyriacou was born in Nicosia. She studied History, Law and English Literature at the University of London and journalism and political science on a Fulbright Scholarship at Georgia State University, including training at CNN in Atlanta and later at Radio Netherlands in Amsterdam. She started her career as a journalist at ERT where she worked for three years. She was later employed at the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) where she reached the position of Acting Director of the News and Current Affairs Department. Apart from being an editor both in TV and radio, she was involved in the research and production of documentaries on the 1974 coup d’état, the Turkish invasion, the missing persons, the enclaved and more widely on issues related to the recent history of Cyprus. She visited Famagusta even before the opening of the checkpoints and took scenes of the area and was the first to present exclusive pictures of the fenced area of Famagusta. She made a number of documentaries on Constantinople, China, S. Africa, Cuba. As a political editor she covered many rounds of negotiations on the Cyprus issue, international congresses, European Summits, UN General Assemblies etc. and secured exclusive interviews with many personalities and political figures including the ex-Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Fidel Castro and Noam Chomsky. She was a member of the board of the Nicosia Film Club and later president of the Cyprus Film Movement. She participates in bi communal organizations for the federal solution of the Cyprus problem and I is also a member of the board of OPEK and the Technical Committee on Gender Equality.