Postdoctoral Scholars

Yasemin Y. Celikkol is a scholar of global communication with research interests situated at the nexus between popular culture and geopolitics. She is the inaugural Global Postdoctoral Scholar at Northwestern University in Qatar, where she is affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South. Her most recent work pertains to the geopolitics of globalized Turkish TV series, as well as shalwar and fashion hegemony, published in the International Journal of Communication and the International Journal of Cultural Studies, respectively. Her books and articles have also been published in Turkey and Japan. She is Board of Advisors member of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC). Celikkol pursued her education in Bulgaria, the US, and Japan, culminating in her PhD in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. Celikkol is multilingual (Bulgarian, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, etc.). She tweets @yaseminyusufoff. 

Mariam Karim is currently completing her PhD in Information and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto (iSchool, 2023) and will be joining Northwestern University in Qatar in fall 2023. Mariam holds an undergraduate degree (HBA, 2012) in Visual Culture & Communications from the University of Toronto and an MA (2013) in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory from McMaster University. She is the recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council doctoral award (2018-2022) and recently served as an inaugural graduate fellow at the Critical Digital Humanities Institute (2022). Karim situates contemporary uses of digital media through historical inquiry. She studies Arabic mass media in the context of media imperialism and colonialism. To do this, she follows Arabic women’s expansive mass-media practices, contributions, and ideas from the 20^th century as central points of reference. Her interests lie at the intersections of multilingual media, information, gender, political theory, translation, infrastructure, historical, archival, visual, and literary studies.

Chafic Tony Najem studies prisoners' illicit media practices and the use of smuggled digital media technologies in carceral spaces, with a particular focus on Lebanon. He investigates the political and testimonial prospects of prisoners produced images and videos, modes of production, and digital materialities behind bars. His research explores questions related to social movements and media mobilization, media witnessing, and vulnerability and resistance in relation to political and media practices in and from the Global South. Najem received his degrees from Stockholm University, the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, and the American University of Beirut (AUB). His work is positioned within the field of Media Studies and aims to contribute to the fields of visual culture and documentary studies.

Harsha Man Maharjan’s current research centers on the critical evaluation of the social, political, technological, and economic implications of 'smart cards' in Nepal. Previously, he worked a senior researcher at Martin Chautari, a research institute in Kathmandu, beginning his research in 2008. He has coauthored two books and coedited three books in Nepali, and his work on digital journalism, media/digital practices, development communication, media/digital policies, and media history has been published in various international and national journals and books. He has taught courses on mass communication theories, South Asian media, media industries, media research, and thesis writing at Tribhuvan University and Purbanchal University in Nepal. He earned is PhD from Kyoto University in 2019 and served as the Academic/Research Head at Polygon College in Nepal from December 2020 to May 2023.