Doha: The Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (IAS NU-Q) and the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) have announced the launch of the Society for Humanistic Arab Media Studies (SHAMS), a pioneering trilingual scholarly association dedicated to advancing rigorous, multidisciplinary, and humanistic research on Arab media in their social, cultural, and political-economic contexts.
According to Qatar News Agency, the new joint initiative, supported in part by Carnegie Corporation of New York, is part of NU-Q's Arab Information and Media Studies (AIMS) project and builds on the Institute's long-standing partnership with ACSS. It aims to strengthen humanistic research and knowledge production in the Arab region and foster rigorous, interdisciplinary research that enriches the intellectual landscape of Arab media studies by drawing on a wide range of disciplines. This includes literature, history, philosophy, media studies, digital humanities, and postcolonial theory.
"Working with ACSS has shown us just how powerful trilingualism can be in creating connected, overlapping scholarly publics," said Dean and CEO of NU-Q Marwan Kraidy. With SHAMS, we are building on that idea; not just to promote research on Arab media, but to bring together a multilingual network of scholars who have deep expertise about the region. What excites me most is that SHAMS will be a space led by scholars, grounded in the Arab world, and committed to critical thinking from the South about their region."
The initiative was launched at the ACSS seventh conference in Beirut, where the Institute led a scholarly discussion under the conference theme "Devastation, Imaginaries and Knowledge: Regional Junctures and Global Repercussions."
Faculty and scholars from across the NU-Q community showcased a wide range of scholarly works. This includes an analysis of televised representations of youth in Guinea by Director of IAS NU-Q Clovis Bergre, and three film screenings curated by Associate Professor Rana Kazkaz and IAS NU-Q Global Postdoctoral Scholar Chafic Najem.
As part of the conference program, Dean Kraidy chaired a panel on Arab digitalities, exploring how digital technologies are shaping everyday life across the Arab region. The panel brought together research on the intersections of media, politics, and lived experience. Panelists included Chafic Najem, Assistant Professor in Residence at NU-Q Leila Tayeb, and Assistant Professor in Residence at Utrecht University Nermin El Sherif.
In another session, scholars explored how the digital can be conceptualized and studied within an InterAsia framework. Panelists included Global Postdoctoral Scholar at IAS NU-Q Harsha Man Maharjan, who proposed a transregional approach to national ID systems in his presentation, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the American University of Beirut Ada Petiwala, who examined how digital narratives of tolerance obscure structural violence in the Middle East, and Global Postdoctoral Scholar at IAS NU-Q Mariam Karim, who offered a feminist intervention into digital archival practices.
As part of the conference, leaders from IAS NU-Q and ACSS also convened to chart the next phase of the InterAsia Partnership, a network committed to reconceptualizing Asia as a dynamic and interconnected formation and to serving as a vital platform for transregional dialogue, collaborative scholarship, and the development of new theoretical frameworks that reflect the complexities of Asia in a global context.
The partnership between IAS NU-Q and ACSS began in 2022 with the launch of the Critical Security Studies (CSS) hub in Qatar and has since grown into a dynamic collaboration that broadens regional dialogue and opens new pathways for knowledge production from and about the Arab world.
With SHAMS now offering a dedicated home for humanistic Arab media studies, and the InterAsia Partnership entering a new phase of transregional engagement, the Institute continues to drive forward inclusive, interdisciplinary scholarship from the Arab region and the wider Global South.