#IAS_NUQ
About the Faculty
Left to Right: Omar Al-Ghazzi, Rahul Mukherjee, and Tanja Bosch.
The Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South (#IAS_NUQ) is pleased to open a call for applications for the 2025 Theory and Method Winter School to take place from January 8 – 10, 2025 in Doha, Qatar. #IAS_NUQ Theory and Method Winter Schools are intended for graduate students and other early career scholars in the social sciences and humanities working on topics related to media, communications, and information studies. The topic of this year’s Winter School is “Arab and Southern Digitalities.”
#IAS_NUQ Theory and Method Winter Schools are supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Directed by Marwan M. Kraidy under the Institute’s Arab Information and Media Studies (AIMS) project. The goal of the AIMS project is to expand the field of critical media and information studies in the Arab region and transform it into a more interdisciplinary, multilingual, collaborative, research-oriented, and policy-relevant field.
The 2025 Theory and Method Winter School is designed to develop critical skills for early career scholars of media and communications, with an explicit focus on integrating scholars of Arab media into transnational and multilingual networks of ideas and theories based in the Global South, centered around the concept of “Southern Digitalities.” It will consist of 1) three theory and method master classes related to historical methods; epistemic decolonization of digital media; and environmental humanities led by faculty instructors and 2) graduate students and early career scholars presenting their research and receiving feedback from faculty instructors and other participants.
Omar Al-Ghazzi is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He works on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news media and popular culture. He is interested in the political contestation of narratives around digital technologies, as well as of representations of time and memory, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals in communications, journalism, and cultural studies. He is currently completing a book on the politics of history in Arab media. He is editor in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication.
Rahul Mukherjee is Associate Professor of TV and New Media and Graduate Chair in the Department of Cinema & Media Studies, University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the logistical and environmental dimensions of digital infrastructures and platforms. Rahul is the author of Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty (DUP, 2020) and is presently completing his second book Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution (MIT Press, forthcoming Fall 2025). He has co-edited journal special issues regarding platformization of everyday life in India (Asiascape: Digital Asia) and Media Power in Digital Asia (Media, Culture & Society).
Tanja Bosch is Professor of Media Studies at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town. She is author of Broadcasting Democracy: Radio and Identity in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2017), Social Media and Everyday Life in South Africa (Routledge 2020); and editor of Digital Citizenship in Africa (Bloomsbury, 2023) and Digital Feminist Citizenship in Africa (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2025). Her research includes work on southern epistemologies, feminist digital citizenship, and social media culture and activism. She is the editor of African Journalism Studies and an associate editor of the Journal of Communication and Communication Theory. Bosch is also the Chairperson of the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN)
The Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (#IAS_NUQ) produces and promotes evidence-based storytelling focused on the histories, cultures, societies, and media of the Global South. Our inclusive vision of globality recognizes the diversities and inequalities that shape the societies we inhabit and study. Espousing a broadly humanistic approach, we harness traditions from the liberal arts, media, communication, and journalism to forge multi-disciplinary and multi-modal approaches to knowledge that are locally relevant and globally resonant.
Graduate students and other early career scholars in the social sciences and humanities working on topics related to media, communications, and information studies in the Global South are encouraged to apply.
The working language at #IAS_NUQ is English; applicants should therefore have a strong command of English.
Interested applicants should submit the following:
Please submit all application materials as a single PDF document to ias@qatar.northwestern.edu by October 20, 2024.
#IAS_NUQ staff will review applications and may request additional information from applicants.
Accepted participants will be notified by email by November 8 and asked to submit an 8,000 – 10,000-word polished draft of a research output for feedback by December 8.
Round-trip economy airfare, accommodation, and meals will be covered for the duration of the Winter School. Travel will only be booked upon submission of the research output.
Click here for more information on the Arab Information and Media Studies Project (AIMS) at #IAS_NUQ.
Click here for more information about #IAS_NUQ.
