Current Research
Ph.D. Communication and Media Studies, The London School of Economics and Political ScienceMediating reconstruction: Post-Taliban development media and gender in Afghanistan
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Sarah Kamal
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2007 Trudeau Scholar
sarah.kamal@trudeaufoundation.net
Mediating reconstruction: Post-Taliban development media and gender in AfghanistanProfile
The road to Sarah Kamal’s thesis topic is a circuitous one. On side trail involves volunteering with two humanitarian organizations run by Afghan refugees in Pakistan. She visited undergrounds schools for girls in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and lived for a week in a refugee camp in Pakistan, observing the self-organization and resilience of the Afghan refugee communities. “I was so impressed how people who had so little themselves were still working to better the plight of others,” she says. “I stayed and since have become a little obsessed with the country and its people.”
The war in Afghanistan was so disturbing to her she began to look for ways to contribute to reconstruction efforts. She travelled widely, and along the way informally monitored the media. She noted great contrasts in how the conflict was portrayed between France, the United States, and Pakistan. On the one hand, she says, media was wielded as a powerful weapon in dehumanizing or demonizing the ‘other.’ On the other, it could be used constructively as a tool for peace building.
“Canada’s multiculturalism makes it a world leader,” she says. “And having the CBC is incredible, in that it is a media form that is mandated to work for the people’s interest and not for government or big business. I think that level of independence is very important, particularly when you look at how it’s done in other countries.”
Her volunteer experiences in Central America, Africa, and South Asia have led her to critique international development in her research: she is investigating the influence of reconstruction media’s gender messaging, both as a force for negotiating gender equality and as a destabilizing influence in Afghanistan’s fragile post-conflict society. Eventually, she hopes her research can be leveraged to have more wide-ranging implications on media development theory and practice, and gender ideologies as they impact women’s lives in the Islamic world. Current Residence
Montreal, QuebecLanguages
English and Farsi, Spanish, FrenchDegrees
- M.Sc. Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Honours Co-operative Bachelor of Mathematics in Operations Research, University of Waterloo
Current Research
Mediating Reconstruction: Post-Taliban Development Communications and Gender in Afghanistan
Ms. Kamal is interested in investigating how post-Taliban development media has influenced gender relations in the Afghan household for my PhD dissertation. Afghanistan's post-conflict period has seen a significant shift in communications practices and conventions, with a large influx of primarily Western funding and influence spearheading the post-conflict transition of an ethnically fragmented, infrastructure-poor, predominantly rural Islamic republic. She proposes to research the consequences of development communications on the intimate worlds of domestic order now, five years following the start of the reconstruction period.
Past Research
- Development Communications Strategies and Domestic Violence in Afghanistan
- Media, Public Opinion, and Peace Conditionalities in Post-Conflict Afghanistan: A study into Local Views on Donor Behaviour
- Children and Adolescents in Sahrawi and Afghan Refugee Households: Living with Prolonged Armed Conflict and Forced Migration
- Cultured Men, Uncultured Women: The Gendered Hierarchy of Taste Governing Local Afghan Radio
Awards
- Doctoral Award, SSHRC
- Mellon-MIT Inter-University Program on NGOs and Forced Migration Research Award
- Small Initiatives Program, Oxfam International
- Carroll L. Wilson Award
- Canada Scholarship for Science and Engineering
Social Engagement
- Volunteer Book Project Coordinator for the Hesperian Foundation
- Facilitator for pilot First Nations youth leadership camp for Children's International Summer Villages
- Resident Volunteer, Ottawa Foyers Partage
- Founder and Cyclist, Cycling for Opportunity, 4500km fund-raising cycling tour
- Founder and Chair, BUDS: hihgschool student dropout prevention program
Work Experience
- Editor, National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan, UNIFEM Aghanistan
- Media Specialist, UNIFEM Aghanistan
- Radio Trainer, Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society
- Research Associate, Sustainable Development Research Institute, UBC
- Appropriate Technology Consultant, Africa Community Technical Services
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