Marco Werman, host of public radio’s ‘The World,’ will begin broadcasting from UC San Diego

International affairs and politics are about to get a higher profile at UC San Diego, where Marco Werman, host of the award-winning public radio show “The World,” will become the La Jolla university’s first journalist-in-residence.

UCSD says Werman will begin hosting the show from the Department of Communications on Tuesday, July 5. The radio newsmagazine and podcast, which is produced by WGBH and Public Radio Exchange and heard on nearly 300 stations nationwide, will still be headquartered in Boston.

Werman is moving to UCSD partly to help the department develop its new Democracy Lab, which the university describes as “a collective of scholars, community organizers, activists, educators and practitioners working toward re-envisioning participatory democracy.”

Among other things, the lab will examine how well mainstream media organizations cover racial justice issues.

“We’ll have an opportunity to expand audience engagement opportunities for our show with students and faculty and to learn from them as well,” Werman said in a statement.

Werman’s career in news and public affairs began more than 40 years ago in Raleigh, N.C., where he worked as a copy boy at the News & Observer at age 16. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at nearby Duke University.

He also worked as a Peace Corps volunteer for a while. But most of Werman’s professional life has been focused on journalism, spanning radio, television, print, digital and documentary photography.

His passion for radio developed in Burkina Faso in West Africa, where he was a freelance reporter for the BBC World Service. He then moved to London and helped World Service produce a morning program on Africa.

Werman returned to the United States, helping create a public radio station in New York’s Adirondacks.

He later moved to Rome to work as a radio correspondent. A short time later, WGBH hired him to help create “The World,” where he has been ever since. ◆