Dr. Peter Gross is professor emeritus and former Director of the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Electronic Media (2006-2016); retired since January 2019. Before his tenure at UT, he held the Gaylord Family Endowed Chair at the University of Oklahoma, also serving as Director of the Institute for Research and Training at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is an adjunct faculty in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC), The University of Iowa.

Gross is a member of the Media and Journalism Research Center’s “Expert Community,” a European research group associated with the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He serves as “East and Central European Media, Communication and Information” Series Editor for Anthem Press (London, New York, Melbourne, New Delhi). He was a non-resident Fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society, the Central European University, Vienna, Austria; Co-Editor of the Journal of Romanian Studies; and columnist for Transitions Online, a Czech-based journal concentrated on East and Central European politics, economics, society, culture, and media.

Multilingual, his research focus is East and Central European societies, media, journalism, and cultures. He carried out multiple assessment assignments for the U.S. Information Agency (U.S.I.A.)/U.S. Department of State and Voice of America in these regions and conducted numerous U.S.I.A. and Academy for Educational Development-sponsored training programs for journalists. In the 1990s, he was instrumental in establishing the journalism program at the University of Timisoara West, Romania.

Among his 14 authored and co-authored scholarly books, textbooks, and co-edited book collections are, Mass Media in Revolution and National Development. The Romanian Laboratory; Entangled Evolutions. Media and Democratization in Eastern Europe; Media Transformations in the Post-Communist World: Eastern Europe’s Tortured Path to Change, co-edited with Dr. Karol Jakubowicz (Poland); and The Cultural Core of Media Systems. The Romanian Case.

In addition to his chapters in edited volumes and other academic writings published on both sides of the Atlantic, his scholarly articles appeared in U.S. and European academic journals (e.g. Journalism Studies; Media, Culture and Society; International Journal of Press/Politics; European Journal of Communication; East European Politics and Society; Political Communication and Persuasion; East European Quarterly; Sfera Politicii - Romanian political science review; Me.Dok - Hungarian journal of Media, Press History, and Communication; Comunicación y Sociedad – Spanish Journal of Social Communication; Reseaux – French Journal of Communication Research). His journalistic writing was/is disseminated in European and American general circulation and professional publications (e.g. Balkan Insight – Serbia; New Eastern Europe – Poland; Social Europe - England; Transitions – Czechia; Revista 22, and Dilema – Romania; Media Perspektiven – Germany; Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor - International Edition, Columbia Journalism Review, Eurasian Daily Monitor - The Jamestown Foundation; Georgetown Journal of International Affairs – Georgetown University, U.S.A.). 

In 1996, Gross was a research fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. He lectured at the U.S. Department of State's National Foreign Affairs Training Center/Foreign Service Institute, the United States government's training school for members of the U.S. foreign affairs community. Gross served as consultant to and executed assignments for the International Media Fund, Freedom Forum, Freedom House, the U.S.I.A. and Voice of America, among other governmental and non-governmental organizations. 

During his almost four decades in academia, Gross was awarded over 50 research, lecture and training awards and grants by, among other institutions, the International Research and Exchanges Board; Ford Foundation; U.S.I.A./U.S. Department of State; Open Society Foundation; International Media Fund; German Marshall Fund of the U.S.; National Academy of Sciences; Freedom Forum; Fulbright; and Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

He serves/ed on the editorial boards of 15 American, British, Hungarian, Romanian, and Spanish academic journals. Among several other functions, he serves/ed as Ratings Review Advisor for the Freedom House's (Annual) Freedom of the Press Index (U.S.A.); Grant Proposal Reviewer for the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Awards Program (U.S.A., Romania, and Poland), the American Councils for International Education, and the National Science Center of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. He also served as board member/scientific advisor for the "Press Freedom and Media Systems in Europe” project at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and the International Center for Protest Research, Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany, both sponsored by the European Union.

Since finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa SJMC, Gross provided keynote addresses and presented papers at scholarly conferences and workshops in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Moldova, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Scotland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, Yugoslavia (prior to 1991/92), and the U.S.A. 

From 1985 to 2019, he directed seminars and lectured at the University of Dortmund, Germany; Oxford University (Wolfson College), England; Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania; the Universities of Madrid, Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, Murcia, and Barcelona, Spain; the University of Tirana, Albania; the Jagiellonian University, Poland; the Universities of Bucharest, Timisoara West, Babes-Bolyai, and the Black Sea University, Romania; The Association of Georgian Journalists, Georgia; the Central European University, Hungary; the International Summer School for Democracy, Montenegro; Tajik State University, Tajikistan; The University of Salzburg, Austria; and Shanghai University, China.

In 2009, Gross received one of Romania’s highest national awards, the “Order of Merit in Education,” Commander Grade, conferred by decree by the President of the country for “unusual merit in the development of education…and in research.” In 2005, the University of Bucharest, Romania, awarded Gross an honorary doctorate for his contributions to East and Central European media scholarship, as did the University of Timisoara West, Romania, in 2009. The Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, accorded him the Honorary Professorship in 2018. 

Among other honors, he was awarded the 2016 Northern Illinois University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Alumni Award, and the 2016 Donald R. Grubb Distinguished Journalism Alumni of the Year Award. He was inducted into the University of Iowa SJMC’s Hall of Fame in Spring 2022.