FROM TOP LEFT: Chafic Najem, Mona Hedayati, Ghaleb Attrache, and Demet Yigitbilek.
Doha, Qatar: Northwestern University in Qatar is expanding its faculty with four new appointments whose work engages some of the defining questions shaping media, technology, culture, and society today—from artificial intelligence and mobile communication to environmental media and the evolving role of writing in a rapidly changing information landscape.
Chafic Najem and Demet Yigitbilek join Northwestern Qatar at the start of the 2026–27 academic year, while Ghaleb Attrache and Mona Hedayati will join the faculty in January 2027. Together, their appointments strengthen teaching and scholarship across the Communication and Liberal Arts programmes and expand the perspectives available to students studying media and communication in and from the Global South.
“These appointments align to Northwestern Qatar’s value of academic excellence, reflecting our ambition to build a distinctive intellectual community that is grounded in the Global South while engaging with some of the most consequential questions shaping our world,” said dean and CEO of Northwestern Qatar, Marwan M. Kraidy.
“From artificial intelligence and digital media to environmental change and writing, these are forces transforming how we understand, communicate, and shape human experience. Bringing these scholars into our community advances our commitment to excellence, collaboration, and evidence-based storytelling, while preparing our students not merely to navigate change, but to help shape it with knowledge, creativity, and purpose.”
Chafic Najem is an assistant professor in residence with a joint appointment across Communication and Liberal Arts programmes, bringing expertise in Arab digital media and mobile communication studies.
His teaching and scholarship will contribute to Northwestern Qatar’s growing engagement with digital cultures and communication in the Arab world, examining how mobile technologies and digital platforms intersect with everyday life, social relations, culture, and communication practices.
Joining the Liberal Arts programme in January 2027, Ghaleb Attrache will serve as assistant professor in residence with a focus on environmental humanities and media technologies.
Working at the intersection of environmental thought, culture, and technology, Attrache will expand opportunities for students to consider how media technologies shape relationships between people, environments, infrastructures, and the natural world.
Mona Hedayati will join the Communication Programme as assistant professor in residence in January 2027, strengthening Northwestern Qatar’s expanding teaching and scholarship on artificial intelligence through humanistic and critical approaches to emerging technologies.
At Northwestern Qatar, her work will contribute to a growing institutional conversation that approaches AI not simply as a technological development, but as a cultural, political, ethical, and creative phenomenon.
Demet Yigitbilek joins the Liberal Arts Programme as lecturer in residence in writing studies, adding further depth to Northwestern Qatar’s emphasis on writing as fundamental to intellectual inquiry, communication, and storytelling.
