#IAS_NUQ

The Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University Qatar

Mission

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. We harness traditions from the liberal arts, media, communication, and journalism to forge multi-disciplinary and multi-modal approaches to knowledge that is locally relevant and globally resonant. This synthesis of deep expertise, interdisciplinary inquiry, and creative mediamaking stimulates critical conversations about enduring questions and emerging challenges that confront the Global South and its enmeshments in global structures and flows of people, goods, words, images, and ideas. Our core commitments are to amplify NU-Q faculty and student scholarship and mediamaking, to boost undergraduate research, mentor our students who plan to pursue advanced graduate degrees, and forge pathways to the professoriate locally and globally. To these ends, #IAS_NUQ hosts fellows (student, postdoctoral, faculty) who work on individual projects and collaborate in local and global research groups, produce multi-lingual and multi-modal #IAS_NUQ_Press publications and creative media, and organizes lectures, screenings, workshops, and conferences. 

Research

Research at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South is organized around four key themes.  These themes reflect our vision of globality, recognizing the different forces shaping the societies we inhabit and study. Together and in conversation with one another, these four orienting themes are designed to stimulate critical conversations about enduring questions and emerging challenges that confront the Global South and its enmeshments in global structures and flows of people, goods, images, and ideas.

Learn More About Our Research

Founder

DEAN AND CEO

Marwan M. Kraidy

Marwan M. Kraidy is a scholar of global communication and an authority on Arab media, culture, and politics. An award-winning author and Andrew Carnegie Fellow, Kraidy’s research centers around the relationship between culture and geopolitics, theories of identity and modernity, and global media systems and industries. He is also an expert on the Middle East and fluent in Arabic.

More on Dean Kraidy

Staff

Postdoctoral Scholars

Call for Applications Meet the Scholars

#IAS_NUQ Postdoctoral Scholars integrate primary sources and linguistic and regional expertise in theoretically inflected, historically informed, comparative, translocal, and transnational scholarship and mediamaking focused on the Global South. Candidates incorporating non-Western theories, sources, and contexts, are especially welcome. Our research and reading groups have focused on Arab media, critical security, southern digitalities, youth and media, and epistemologies of the Global South.

Faculty Advisory Committee

Haya Al-Noaimi

Assistant Professor in Residence

 

Heather Jaber

Assistant Professor in Residence

 

Rana Kazkaz

Director of the Communication Program
Associate Professor in Residence

 

Scheherazade Safla-Gaffoor

Assistant Professor in Residence

Greg Burris

Associate Professor in Residence

Fellowships

Our fellowship programs support scholars working in and on the Global South. At the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South, fellows draw on diverse disciplines to produce knowledge that is locally grounded and globally resonant. They push against disciplinary boundaries to spark critical conversations on enduring and emerging challenges. As part of an inclusive community of scholars, #IAS_NUQ Fellows pursue individual projects, collaborate in research groups, publish multilingual work, and organize lectures, screenings, workshops, and conferences.

Global Undergraduate Fellowships

The Global Undergraduate Fellowship offers Northwestern Qatar students the opportunity to advance new or ongoing research and creative projects to develop them into an original contribution to evidence-based storytelling and hence to knowledge. Over a year, fellows work with #IAS_NUQ staff and faculty mentors to strengthen their research skills, develop their concepts, and produce original work published with #IAS_NUQ_Press and presented to local and global audiences.

Call for Applications Meet the 2025 Fellows Meet the previous Fellows

Global Fellows

Alongside their own projects, #IAS_NUQ Global Fellows take part in the Institute’s intellectual life through research groups, feedback sessions, and events. They present their work publicly and are encouraged to publish a multilingual working paper or creative output with #IAS_NUQ_Press.

Meet the 2025-26 Fellows Meet the previous Fellows

 

#IAS_NUQ_Press

IAS_NUQ_Press is an open-access, multimodal, and multilingual publisher housed at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern Qatar.

View publications

Winter School

#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 2026 Theory and Method Winter School will take place from January 6 – 8, 2026 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 whose work engages media, communications, or information studies. The topic of this year’s Winter School is “Media Policy and Governance.”

Call for Applications

Current Opportunities at #IAS_NUQ

Stay up to date with open calls, programs, and initiatives at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South (#IAS_NUQ). Whether you are a student, scholar, or practitioner, discover ways to engage with our mission to produce and promote evidence-based storytelling on the histories, cultures, societies, and media of the Global South.

Learn more

News