Experts

Marwan M. Kraidy

The Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics & Culture Director, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication.
Annenberg School for Communication.
University of Pennsylvania.

Fluent in Arabic and French, and conversant in Spanish, Marwan Kraidy is an expert in global communication and a specialist in Arab media and politics. He also researches the relationship between culture and geopolitics, global media industries, theories of identity and modernity, and the political symbolism of the human body in the public sphere.

In 2016, Kraidy was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for his work on war machines in the age of global communication.

His work is distinctive for its deep reliance on primary materials, theoretical grounding in a multilingual literature, and a comparative approach across historical periods, geographical sites, cultural forms, and media platforms.

Ongoing research focuses on war machines in the digital age (particularly Islamic State), speed, spectacle and security in global communication, and the rise and fall of Turkey in Arab public culture. He teaches courses on globalization, culture and revolution, the body in digital culture, contentious publics, and the geopolitics of popular culture.

Kraidy has published 10 books, penned 120 essays and chapters, won 50 awards for teaching and scholarship, delivered keynote addresses and named lectures worldwide, and advised universities, civil society organizations, foundations, and governments. Notable books include Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization (link is external) (Temple University Press, 2005), and Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life (link is external)(Cambridge University Press 2010), supported by a Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, and winner of three major prizes: the Diamond Anniversary Best Book Award and the Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award in Political Communication, National Communication Association; and Best Book Award in Global Communication and Social Change, International Communication Association.

Kraidy’s account of the Arab Spring, The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World (link is external) (Harvard University Press, 2016, May), considers the uprisings through the human body as a physical, symbolic and aesthetic locus of power and rebellion, and features an engrossing cast of characters—self-immolators, puppets, superheroes, poets, street artists, digital videographers, satirists, and of course, the naked blogger—who confronted scorned dictators. He will publish two more books in 2016: Global Media Studies (with Toby Miller, Polity), and American Studies Encounters the Middle East (with Alex Lubin, University of North Carolina Press).

 

Media Contact

Julie Sloane | 215-746-1798 | jsloane@asc.upenn.edu