Jad Melki

Jad Melki, Ph.D., is professor of journalism and communication and director of the Institute of Media Research and Training at the Lebanese American University (LAU). He is also a visiting faculty at the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, an affiliated researcher with the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) at the University of Maryland (UMD), a Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University, and an affiliated faculty at the Jordan Media Institute. Previously, Melki served as chairperson of the Department of Communication Arts at LAU, as research director of ICMPA at UMD, and as founding director of the Media Studies Program at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where he received a service excellence award. Melki’s research is at the intersection of media literacy, journalism and oppression and draws on intersectional feminist theory, health communication, war journalism, and crisis communication, and focuses on Arab media and society. His recent book Media Literacy of the Oppressed offers a new mission and purpose for media literacy educators and students, especially those in the Global South and working with marginalized communities. In 2020, Melki won the Shoman Arab Researchers Award for his scholarship on the impact of social media in the Arab World, and in 2015 the UNESCO-UNAoC International Media and Information Literacy Award for advancing media literacy education in the Arab region through founding and directing the Media and Digital Literacy Academy of Beirut (MDLAB). Melki has taught at Johns Hopkins University, UMD, Towson University, Jordan Media Institute, AUB, and at LAU, where he received a teaching excellence award in 2018/19 and a research excellence award in 2021/22. Prior to academia, Melki was a broadcast and digital journalist and communication expert working with US and Arab media. He won a Webby Award and a National Press Club Award for covering the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. Melki received his Ph.D. from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland in 2008.