Personal Statement
Born in Switzerland in 1981, Rudi Palmieri (PhD in Communication Sciences) is Reader in Strategic Communication at the University of Liverpool (UK). He is the Co-Director of the Research Centre "Language, Data and Society" (LANDS).

Before joining University of Liverpool, Rudi Palmieri was lecturer and post-doctoral researcher at Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano). He has also been a visiting fellow researcher (Aug. 2009 – Jan. 2010) at the University of Amsterdam (Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric), with a SNSF-funded grant (Fellowships for prospective researchers). From August 2018 to July 2019, he has served as Head of the Department of Communication and Media.

The main subjects of his research are (a) strategic communication, more in particular business and financial communication, which he approaches by privileging a discourse-analytic perspective, (b) argumentation theory, with a particular interest in the reconstruction of patterns of argumentative strategies in persuasive communication contexts; (c) the argumentative dynamics of trust in crisis communication and similar strategic situations; (d) the impact of (generative) AI on argumentation practices and the emergence of AI as an object of argumentative disputes in strategic communication contexts. On all these topics, he has taught several courses at UG, PG and Doctoral levels and has been invited for guest lectures/courses in various countries, such as Sweden, France, Portugal, Switzerland and Italy.

Through his engagement with the academic communities in argumentation (ECA, Argage, ISSA), strategic communication (EUPRERA) and business communication (ABC), he has been actively promoting the integration of argumentation theories and models into the study of strategic financial communication. His work in this area includes the organisation of conferences and thematic panels, the editing of journal special issues and the promotion of international research projects.

From 2009 to 2012 he coordinated the SNSF-funded doctoral program Argumentation Practices in Context (Argupolis). He has been second proposer and UK representative in the EU COST Action “European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis” (2018-2023). He is currently research partner to SNSF-funded project "RECOUNT: Reasons of the others: concession and counterargument in polylogues”.

He has worked on several knowledge exchange projects with partners from the corporate and financial sectors and offers CPD courses and coaching to organisations on topics like interpersonal and persuasive communication.