Echoes and Overlaps in Arab and African Thought on Media and Culture

This one-day preconference explores the shared epistemologies, divergences, and entangled histories of Arab and African thought on media and culture. In alignment with the 2025 ICA theme—Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research—this gathering foregrounds scholarship from the Global South to reimagine the future of media and communication studies.

Rather than positioning Arab and African scholarship in isolation or in contrast to Western thought, the preconference focuses on longstanding traditions of exchange and zones of intellectual, cultural, and political transaction—stretching from Timbuktu to Baghdad, Fez to the Sahara. It seeks to highlight theoretical approaches and lived cosmologies that resist compartmentalization and offer rich alternatives for global media theorizing.

Framed around three keywords—Exchange, Experiment, and Excess—the day’s sessions invite generative conversations on openness, creative methodologies, and epistemic possibilities that spill beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Register by May 15.

To explore all our other events at ICA25, including panels, presentations, and booth activities, click here.