AEJMC ICD panel on journalism education in South Asia (Oct 13)

The event will bring together an international panel of journalism experts who will discuss the challenges and opportunities shaping the journalism education landscape in South Asia and the lessons to be learned inside the region and beyond.

Our panelists will include:

• Dr. Kulveen Trehan (Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, India)
• Dr. Syed Irfan Ashraf (University of Peshawar, Pakistan)
• Dr. Shugofa Dastgeer (Texas Christian University, United States)
• Md. Shamsul Islam (State University of Bangladesh, Bangladesh)
• Madhubhashini R. Rathnayaka (Women in Journalism, Sri Lanka)
• Laxman Datt Pant (Media Action Nepal)

The panel will be moderated by Dr. Delaware Arif (University of South Alabama, United States) and Dr. Neelam Sharma (Idaho State University, United States).

Dr. Syed Irfan Ashraf received his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, United States, in 2019. Since 2004, he has been teaching as Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Peshawar, Pakistan. He has been a journalist in Pakistan working with Nawai Waqat, The Frontier Post, The News and Dawn. From 2009 to 2014, he was writing for the op-ed pages of the English newspaper Dawn on topics related to militancy, media and military. In 2013, he won the prestigious Mirror Award for journalism commentary given by Syracuse University’s S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. For a decade and a half, he worked as a “fixer” for national and global media networks, including significant work for the New York Times in the terrorism-hit Pakistan borderlands that share tribal areas with Afghanistan. As a professional journalist and university instructor, he has a first hand experience of observing the regional situation and has also narrowly escaped personal injury, danger, and death in reporting on the suicide bombings and U.S. drone strikes that killed hundreds of innocent men, women, and children. Drawing upon distinct aspects of his ethnic identity and trade experience, he has recently finished his book-length study with Anthem Press entitle The Dark Side of News Fixing: The Culture and Political Economy of Global Media in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The study aims to show how journalists local to these violence-torn areas are both victims as well as agents in reporting on neo-imperialist wars and the global market. His research area is cross-border journalism in conflict scenarios and representation of the imperialist wars in cultural artifacts.

Dr. Kulveen Trehan is the Programme Coordinator and Senior Assistant Professor at University School of Mass Communication, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Govt. of NCT of Delhi with 19 years of experience in teaching and research in media and communication studies. She published on advertising , media literacy, gender advocacy, digital advocacy and SDG’s, sports journalism and popular culture in reputed journals and books by Sage, Routledge, Springer etc. She is currently involved in an international research project funded by UNICEF & IAMCR on C4D on mapping the efficacy digital campaign Chaa Jaa in Rural India. She was awarded the UCF-IAMCR research grant for her project in 2022. She was part of the team that prepared the Global report on Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo 2020, an International Project in collaboration with University of Texas, USA. She has completed several funded projects and several collaborative research projects as Principal Investigator and researcher. She was conferred with the Iconic Women Award under the Exceptional Leaders of Excellence Category by Women Economic Forum in 2019. She has chaired sessions at international conferences in UK, South America, Spain, USA, Nairobi and Asia besides being invited as keynote speaker to summits, panel discussions, panel discussions, roundtables webinars, FDP’s, Lecture Series in India and abroad. She has been invited to deliver special lectures and conduct workshops at leading universities of Germany, Russia. She is part of the team that developed the CSBC curriculum modules led by UNICEF, is currently engaged in designing e-modules and materials. She is on fellowship jury/ award committees for TRF-UNESCO. She has been a visiting faculty at IIMC (English Journalism, Ad &PR and Development Journalism) for 10 years now. She is a resource person on for training courses organized for senior defense officers (IAF, Indian Army, Navy), SSB, DRDO, NDRF etc. organized by Min of I&B at IIMC, New Delhi, several other ministries, government departments, PSU’s and private organizations for several years. She has been invited on several panels and juries in India and abroad.

Dr. Shugofa Dastgeer is an assistant professor at Texas Christian University who is originally from Afghanistan and has worked as a journalist, news anchor, and producer at ToloNews. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma with a focus on journalism, communication, digital media, and social networks. Her research areas include political communication, digital media, social networks, media sociology, news and journalism, freedom of speech, visual communication, and gender and minorities.

Md. Shamsul Islam is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Journalism, Communication and Media Studies (JCMS) at the State University of Bangladesh, Dhaka.

Madhubhashini R. Rathnayaka is a development communications strategist, former journalist, documentary filmmaker, researcher, budding lawyer and co-founder of the Women in Journalism network in Sri Lanka. She has a special interest in focusing on areas such as gender, inclusion, representation, identity, humanitarian communication and new media with a rights-based approach. Madhubhashini is trained in New Media and Journalism at the University of Oklahoma, under the Study of the United States Institute for Student Leaders (SUSI) program. She holds her MA in Media Practice for Development and Social Change at the University of Sussex as a Chevening Scholar. Madhubhashini has presented her research papers and documentary films in regional and international forums including World Conference on Humanitarian Studies, Hague, Netherlands, International Conference on Promoting Socio-Economic Equity in South Asia: Challenges and Prospects (ICPSE), Colombo, Sri Lanka and Clinik. Kathmandu Project, Kathmandu, Nepal. She has been engaging in multiple initiatives in Sri Lanka to explore methods to bridge the gap between research, academia and practice by introducing and experimenting with development and humanitarian communications-related solutions.

Laxman Datt Pant serves as the Chairperson of Media Action Nepal. The recipient of the “International Communication Excellence Award-2020,” he advises the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) on cases of attacks against media and journalists, and media freedom violations at the global level. In February 2022, Pant was elected as one of the three Co-Chairs of the Media Freedom Coalition-Consultative Network (MFC-CN). An Adjunct Professor of Media Ethics & Safety in Digital Age at the Tbilisi State University (under Erasmus+) in Georgia, he taught development journalism at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh (2008-2009) and various courses of media studies at Kathmandu University in Nepal (2010-2018). In addition to delivering guest lectures in the reputed universities across the world, Pant worked as the Coordinator for Future Communicators’ Project implemented by School of Journalism of the Yunnan University, China (2019-2021). Pant started his career as a journalist more than two decades ago and worked with numerous media institutions in different capacities ranging from a reporter to an editor. Prior to founding Media Action Nepal, he served as Head of Communications at UNESCO, Communications Specialist at UNDP, Media Consultant for donor/multi-donor funded projects/programs of various Ministries , and has formulated numbers of media & communications strategies for national/international organizations. An internationally acclaimed media researcher, trainer, media rights advocate, and communication strategist, Pant worked as South Asia Journalist for DevelopmentAid, hosted/produced over 300 episodes of POWERchat (Nepal’s only TV talk show in English discussing development). An author of more than a dozen books, Pant has contributed numbers of research articles and book chapters to national and international journals and anthologies on different disciplines of media.

Dr. Delaware Arif is an associate professor of digital journalism and Track Head for Multimedia Journalism in the Department of Communication at the University of South Alabama. He is also the Graduate Coordinator and President of the USA Faculty Senate. Currently, he is serving as the Head of the ICD of AEJMC. He was a lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin. He was also an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. He served as chairman of the department. Before joining teaching in 2002, he worked for Reuters, Bangladesh National News Agency (BSS), and an international NGO, the Hunger Project. He earned his Ph.D. in Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) focusing on the patterns of usage of social media among the South Asian diaspora group in the U.S. He also received his M.A. in media theory & research from SIUC. He completed the Training for Trainers course at the International Institute for Journalism (IIJ) in Germany. He also received his B.A. and M.A. in mass communication and journalism from the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. He likes playing soccer, biking, and working out. He also loves playing his guitar during his free time.

Dr. Neelam Sharma earned her Ph.D. in Public Communication and Technology from Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Her research interests include narrative persuasion, digital media, journalism, and South Asian news and entertainment media. Her research appears in journals including the International Journal of Communication, Psychology of Popular Media, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Global Media and Communication, and Atlantic Journal of Communication, among others. She is currently investigating the effects of entertainment programs on the eating habits of preschool-aged children. Before starting her doctoral studies, Dr. Sharma worked as a journalist with The Times of India and The Indian Express in India.