The University of Cambridge & Al Jazeera: A Unique Partnership
evocative of its Arab culture. We began with an initial year of research into the effects of the Arab Spring uprisings on the media. Starting in Tunisia, under the title of ‘Media in Political Transition’, we held conferences and workshops in both Doha and Cambridge, which enabled us to devise a long-term programme of research that would be both ground-breaking and timely – two key ideas that tied the essence of both our organisations together. Al Jazeera was the first – and so far has been the only – Arab media conglomerate to fund independent research, with no strings attached, at a major university. It was also the largest private funding to be received in a decade at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge. Through the Cambridge-Al Jazeera Media Project, we achieved a number of milestones: We brought on the first Al Jazeera Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), Dr Ali Sonay, who also spent several months at the AJCS in Doha during his appointment. We produced three special academic journal issues – one each on Media in Political Transition in Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey (published in the Journal of North African Studies and Middle East Critique).
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