Barkho, Leon

Leon Barkho is a Professor of Media and Communication Sciences at the College of Communication, University of Sharjah (UAE), and Professor Emeritus at Jönköping University (Sweden). Previously, he held positions at Reuters News Agency as bureau chief and the Associated Press as staff writer. He is the founder and editor of the Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies. Barkho has written numerous papers on discourse analysis, language, impartiality, translation and media and communication studies. Barkho is the author of “News from the BBC, CNN and Aljazeera” and editor of “From Theory to Practice: How to Assess and Apply Impartiality in News and Current Affairs” and “Towards a Praxis-Based Media and Journalism Research.”, as well as “A Critique of Arab Media Discourse”.

Jairo Alfonso Lugo-Ocando is the Dean of the College of Communication at the University of Sharjah (UAE). He previously served as the Director of Executive and Graduate Education at Northwestern University (Qatar). Until 2018, he was an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds (UK). His research focuses on the way the news media reports poverty and development and on how journalists use statistics to articulate news. He is author of several monographs and dozens of peer-review journal articles and book chapters. Lugo-Ocando was recipient of the Theodore C. Sorensen Fellowship from the John F. Kennedy Library and has been a visiting lecturer at the National University of Singapore, the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University (USA), Vietnam National University, the University of Malaga (Spain), among others. Before becoming an academic, he worked as a journalist and news editor for several publications in Latin America and the USA and continues to write columns and blogs.

Sadia Jamil is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Communications, The University of Nottingham, Ningbo (China). She holds a PhD in Journalism from the University of Queensland (Australia). Dr. Jamil is the Country Representative for the United Arab Emirates and China at the Asian Media Information & Communication Centre (AMIC), and she is the Chair of the Journalism Research and Education Section of the International Association of Media & Communication Research (IAMCR). Her research focuses on journalism, digital media and communication, public relations, the digital divide, artificial intelligence, and sustainable development.