NU-Q Faculty Discuss Their Research at Qatar Faculty Forum

Two NU-Q faculty members shared their research with colleagues from across Education City at recent Qatar Faculty Forums. Jairo Lugo-Ocando discussed his research on journalism in the Global South and Sami Hermez discussed Palestinian dispossession and resistance.

Lugo-Ocando’s talk, “Journalism in the Global South as a Post-Colonial Construction,” delivered a critique of the prevailing idea that journalism is a Western project founded on the liberal model and emulated by the rest of the world. Challenging this narrative, Lugo-Ocando put forward what he saw as a “more critical understanding of the history of journalism, particularly in relation to the Global South.” 

“Journalism as we know it today in the Global South is both a reflection of colonialism and an expression of resistance,” Lugo-Ocando said. “This is because the work that journalists do, and the media organizations in which they work, are a product of history and social movements. Hence, when we read news, we are actually reading a way of storytelling that was shaped by international information flows and politics.” 

Hermez’s presentation, “Sireen: An Oral History of Palestinian Dispossession and Resistance,” expounded the challenges associated with reassembling the life story of a Palestinian family that has suffered under different forms of political violence in the backdrop of an enduring regime of settler colonialism that continues to erase the people whose stories are being told. 

Hermez said that with his research he examined “the writer’s sense of responsibility and burden.” This burden,” he noted, “accompanies the author and the text, like a haunting figure, and cannot be divorced from the narrative. It frames and crafts stories.”

The Qatar Faculty Forums is an occasional lecture series for faculty across Education City to discuss their research.