Baldwin Van Gorp is a Professor of journalism and communication management at KU Leuven in Belgium. He is the coordinator of the Media, Information & Persuasion Lab.

Bio

Baldwin grew up as the eldest son in a family of seven children. From an early age, he has been passionate about television, feature films, and comic strips. In his teens, he contributed – albeit modestly – in legendary television programmes such as ‘Meester, hij begint weer and ‘Buiten de zone’. After his studies in Political and Social Sciences at the University of Antwerp, he was a professional journalist, and worked for a number of celebrity magazines.

In 1999, Baldwin’s career unexpectedly took a turn when he started writing a dissertation at the University of Antwerp. In his dissertation he presented his own view on the concept of ‘framing’ and applied it to reporting on asylum seekers and refugees in Belgium. He then moved to Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. He taught strategic communication for four years.

In 2009 he returned to Belgium and, in a way, also to his old love, journalism. At KU Leuven, he is a professor at the Master in Journalism and the Master in Communication Science. Meanwhile, he became an international expert in framing. He provides evidence-based communication advice on social themes such as sustainable agriculture, dementia, working-disability, Europe (autumn 2015), mental disorders (2015-2016), child poverty (2016), the destigmatisation of vulnerable people in society (2016-2020), radicalisation (2017-2019), multi-ethnicity (2017-2018), palliative care / euthanasia (2017-2019), migration and affective polarization (2019-2020), social media and asylum (2021), online polarization (2022), persons living with dementia (2023-2027) and climate adaptation (2024-2025). Contact details and a full list of publications can be found on the website of KU Leuven.

In March 2018 his book “Verdraaid! Het nieuws anders bekeken” was published, of which a revised version was launched in 2022 (order in all book stores or online).

Recently, he began to focus on arts-based methods (graphic journalism, graphic medicine, sketching based on observations …). Visual essays he created have been published in prestigious journals such as Visual Studies and Visual Communication.

He can be followed on LinkedIn, Instagram ( @baldwinvangorp) and BlueSky (@baldwinvangorp.bsky.social).

Baldwin is married and has two children. In honour of the birth of his second child he wrote (and illustrated) the children’s book Kaluna. The name ‘Kaluna’ was coined by his father, artist Louis Van Gorp who died in 2008.