Centre for Global Media and Communications

The Centre for Global Media and Communication (CGMC) at SOAS is an interdisciplinary space for research and teaching on communication, digital media, politics and cultures with a focus on Asia, Africa and the Middle East and their diasporas. 

Since its inception in 2003, CGMC has become a hub for research and training in non-Western centric critical media and communication theories and methodologies through consistent reframing and rethinking of the epistemologies and practices that have defined the broad field of critical media and communication studies. Through our research and inclusive teaching, we offer spaces for critiquing the persistence of hegemonic approaches and for producing non-Eurocentric epistemologies and methodologies.

CGMC offers postgraduate education for the next generation of change makers with new visions for de-colonial futures. Our programmes, the MA Global Media and Communications, the MA Media in Development and the MA Global Media and Digital Cultures (online) bring together students from various disciplinary backgrounds and professional experiences mainly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as from the UK, Europe and the US. 

The interdisciplinary study of global media and communication at SOAS is reflected in the expanding doctoral research at the Centre for Global Media and Communication.

Our research students use interdisciplinary approaches and methods for the study of an exceptionally wide range of topics, both theoretical and empirical, on issues related to global and digital media, political communication and cultures, with a particular focus on Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 

The centre pays particular attention to doctoral students’ acquisition of critical theoretical skills and in-depth regional, linguistic and cultural knowledge of diverse communication forms and practices.

We specialise in the critical analysis of media industries and systems, their contents and their audiences in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and their diasporas, an approach equally well-suited to research on Latin American, East European and mainstream ‘Western' media. We encourage research aimed at de-colonising global media studies through grounded theory and methodological research.