Northwestern University in Qatar
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This year’s preconference continues our deep dive into the intellectual and epistemic common grounds, interactions, and constructive divergences in African and Arab scholarship on media and culture, which began at #ICA2025 as part of the preconference on “Echoes and Overlaps in Arab and African Thought on Media and Culture” held at CU Boulder. Guided by long-standing—and more recent—calls to decolonize and de-Westernize knowledge (see Bosch 2025 for instance), we draw attention to Arab and African scholarship on media and culture which has been, and continues to be, systematically occluded due to its form, location, language, race, nationality, and limited access to journals, funding, or distribution circuits. More than an invitation to talk back to the West, our endeavor is first and foremost driven by a desire to forge new directions for media and communication research by building on persistent—yet often repressed—theories, methods, and literatures within Africa and the Arab world.
This one-day preconference is jointly organized by the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South (#IAS_NUQ) at Northwestern University in Qatar, the Centre for Film and Media Studies and Digital Media Sociology Lab at the University of Cape Town, and the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder, with support from Carnegie Foundation of New York through the Arab Information and Media Studies (AIMS) project at #IAS_NUQ.
Deadline: January 9, 2026
This call for applications is intended for researchers wishing to spend all or part of their institutional leave/sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (#IAS_NUQ) pursuing a research project of relevance to the histories, cultures, societies, and media of the Global South.
In addition to pursuing their own research projects, #IAS_NUQ Global Fellows are fully engaged in the intellectual life of the Institute. Fellows participate in research groups, receive feedback on their work-in-progress, and take part in #IAS_NUQ events. They are expected to present publicly on their research/creative scholarship and are encouraged to produce one multilingual working paper or creative output with #IAS_NUQ Press during their affiliation with the Institute.
The duration of an #IAS_NUQ Global Fellowship is a minimum of one month and a maximum of one academic term.
This is a residential fellowship; #IAS_NUQ Global Fellows are therefore expected to work on campus at least four days a week during the period of their fellowship.
Deadline: January 15, 2026
Our Faculty Grants – including the #IAS_NUQ Global South Research Grant and the #IAS_NUQ Conference and Workshop Grant – support NU-Q faculty scholarship and mediamaking with a focus on pressing issues in the Global South using multidisciplinary, multilingual, and multimodal approaches.
Deadline: Rolling applications.