Workshop with Dr. Roxane Farmanfarmaian (University of Cambridge)

Fall Semester 2019

BASEL, 18-19 October 2019

The Inter-University Doctoral Cooperation in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies (MUBIT) is pleased to hold its 7th Annual Doctoral Workshop at the University of Basel between October 18th-19th, 2019. The Workshop is entitled "Values and Status Negotiation: Media in the Middle East and North Africa“ and will be offered by our guest lecturer Dr. Roxane Farmanfarmaian (University of Cambridge). 

In this workshop, students will engage with understandings of the media in the Middle East and North Africa from the perspective of the role media plays in society, and the position it commands in relation to power. This re-conceives the study of media as a political project on grounds that the media reflects the society that produces it and operates as a socially symbolic resource.

Values and Status Negotiation is therefore a framework for understanding the media from the inside, and in terms of their own environments. In today’s increasingly polarized political atmosphere, scholarly interrogation of the media’s rights and appropriate roles in social context is increasingly relevant, and we seek applicants whose work sets out to discover how these are understood, rationalized, exercised, negotiated and found appropriate and useful within different social milieux. Those interested in the practices and power of media across platforms, within both the private and public spheres, who seek fresh approaches to the media’s engagement with audience norms and historical experiences from perspectives that arise from within the Middle East and North Africa, are particularly encouraged to apply.
Related questions that this workshop will explore include: 

1. Defining Free Expression and the Meaning of a Free Media

2. Conceptualizing the Profession of Media and its Instrumental Role in Society

3. The Relationship between Local, Regional and International Media

4. How has the Role of Media changed since the Arab Uprisings?

Click here for further information.

Find here the report on the workshop.