The Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (#IAS_NUQ) has selected four scholars for its 2024-25 Global Fellows program. Ratnamala Vanamamalai will be in residence at NU-Q in fall 2024, while Sagnik Dutta, Chikezie Uzuegbunam, and Patrick Murphy will join in spring 2025.
They are advancing their research while enriching Northwestern Qatar’s intellectual environment by participating in writing groups, presenting research colloquia to the community, and mentoring #IAS_NUQ Global Undergraduate Fellows.
“The 2024-25 Global Fellows bring a wealth of expertise to advance research excellence at Northwestern Qatar. Their focus, which spans critical areas from Indigenous media to digital rights and environmental communication, align perfectly with the Institute’s mission to advance interdisciplinary research to address global challenges,” said Marwan M. Kraidy, dean and CEO of Northwestern Qatar. “The presence of these distinguished scholars will inspire and enrich our students and faculty alike cross-discipilinary collaborations.”
Vanamamalai is a professor and chair of Communication Studies at Mizoram University, India. She holds a PhD from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tamil Nadu, and was a Cornell University visiting fellow. Her research interests include caste and communication, media and minorities, race, urban space, and media and indigeneity.
At #IAS_NUQ, she will work on a book manuscript on the hegemony of state, religion, and indigeneity in media pluralism, focusing on the portrayal of Mizoram in Indian national media and the influence of religion on media practices in the region.
Dutta is an associate professor at OP Jindal Global University, with research interests from global and postcolonial approaches to counterterrorism, data colonialism, data justice, secularism, gender, and minority citizenship. Their work lies at the intersection of political theory, legal anthropology, postcolonial/ decolonial theory, and gender studies.
Dutta’s project is an ethnographic exploration of everyday negotiations between lawyers and digital rights activists, with algorithmic surveillance by the state in Delhi, India. By examining engagements with the law, Dutta aims to understand how local legal cultures shape consciousness in surveillance situations. As part of their fellowship, they plan to explore the interaction between various scales of legal activism and advance scholarship on algorithmic surveillance and critical algorithm studies beyond abstract legal categories.
“The 2024-25 Global Fellows bring a wealth of expertise to advance research excellence at Northwestern Qatar. Their focus, which spans critical areas from Indigenous media to digital rights and environmental communication, align perfectly with the Institute’s mission to advance interdisciplinary research to address global challenges. The presence of these distinguished scholars will inspire and enrich our students and faculty alike cross-discipilinary collaborations.”
Uzuegbunam is the MA Programme Coordinator and Deputy Head of School in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, South Africa, where he teaches Media Studies. He has published extensively on digital technology and young people, popular culture, political and health communication, and misinformation.
Uzuegbunam will concentrate on a book project for the Mellon Foundation-sponsored initiative "Youth, Sociality, and Digitality in South Africa." As the project's lead investigator, he will map the process of sorting, cleaning, and strategizing the analysis of the varied categories of data gathered for this project. He will also work on the first chapter at #IAS_NUQ.
Murphy is a professor of Media Studies and Production at Temple University. His research interests include global communication, environmental communication, development communication, ethnographic methods, and Latin American media and cultural theory. He is the author of The Media Commons: Globalization and Environmental Discourses and has co-edited several volumes.
At #IAS_NUQ, Murphy will work on a book chapter on post-development, degrowth, and other decolonial discourses related to environmentalism. This chapter is part of a larger book project, "Communication, Development, and the Environment," which traces the place of the environment within the field of communication for development and social change (CDSC).
“Hosting the #IAS_NUQ Global Fellowship is always an exciting part of working at the Institute, and we couldn’t be prouder of this year’s incoming cohort whose research projects span Asia, Africa, and Latin America and include projects on indigenous media, youth, digital rights, and environmental communication,” said Clovis Bergère, assistant director for research at #IAS_NUQ. “#IAS_NUQ Global Fellows are a central part of research at the Institute, and we are delighted to have Ratnamala, Sagnik, Chikezie, and Patrick to NU-Q this academic year.”
The #IAS_NUQ Global Fellows program is a key component of the Institute’s work, attracting exceptionally qualified scholars from across the world to spend time at NU-Q and contribute fully to the intellectual life of the Northwestern community.
