Dr. Relly is a professor in the School of Journalism with a courtesy appointment in the School of Government and Public Policy. She currently serves as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Advancement in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Relly previously served as Director of Global Initiatives for the School's Center for Border and Global Journalism and led the development of undergraduate and graduate degrees in the Studies of Global Media Programs, which she directed for three years. Dr. Relly is an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Latin American Studies and Center for Middle Eastern Studies in the School of Global Studies. She is also affiliated with the Center for Digital Society & Data Studies. From 2000-2025, she served on the Humanitarian Assistance Technical Support Faculty.  

Professor Relly’s research focuses on global and domestic influences on news media systems in countries that often are in conflict, post-conflict, or in political or economic transition. She also has a line of research focused on information governance, information literacy and press-state relations. 

Dr. Relly’s collaborations with researchers has spanned six continents. Her research includes more than a half dozen cross-national studies and numerous single-nation projects focused on factors influencing information ecosystems and various forms of insecurity. Over the last decade and a half, her research has been conducted with collaborators in six languages (Arabic, Dari, Hindi, Kurdish, Pashto and Spanish).  Dr. Relly is the author, co-author and co-editor of three books and two monographs and dozens of academic articles and scholarly book chapters. Her co-authored book, Surviving Mexico: Resistance and Resilience Among Journalists in the Twenty-first Century (Austin: The University of Texas Press) (with Dr. Celeste González de Bustamante), received three national awards, the James W. Tankard Book Award, the Knudson Latin America Prize, and the Frank Luther Mott – KTA Journalism & Mass Communication Research Award.

Dr. Relly was a Fulbright research scholar in India and served on the Fulbright Specialist roster. She also was a research fellow with Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. She served as head of the International Communication Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and as chair of the organization’s Elected Standing Professional Freedom and Responsibility Committee. 

Grant-funded research and educational partnerships have focused on digital security, access to information laws, initiatives around humanitarian crises among other issues areas. In the School, Professor Relly developed and taught courses focused on theory and practice; quantitative and qualitative research methods; media and humanitarian crises; disinformation and information security; media and global terrorism; media ethics and representation; media and human rights; reporting; data gathering and data analysis; among other topical areas.

Before joining the faculty, Dr. Relly worked for more than a dozen years as a journalist reporting in a number of states, the Caribbean and the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. She holds a Ph.D. from the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University.

Relly's recent publications can be found on Google Scholar.