Annabelle Sreberny

School of Arts

Emeritus Professor

SOAS Food Studies Centre

Member, SOAS Food Studies Centre

Centre for Gender Studies

Member

Centre for Iranian Studies

Associate Member

Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies

Member

Centre for Global Media and Communications

Emeritus Professor

Name:

Professor Annabelle Sreberny

Email address:

as98@soas.ac.uk

Biography

I am interested in the discourses around globalization and culture, especially as articulated by non-Western states and populations. I am also interested in processes of empowerment and democratization, particularly as experienced by women and minority/diasporic communities; I am currently working on a book on Iranian blogging for IBTauris.

I have trained in psychodynamic counseling which led me to explore the linkages between macro processes and micro experiences and different ways of writing, including auto-ethnography, that interrogate these different levels.

Courses Taught

• Contemporary Themes in Media and Religion 15PSRH048

PhD Students supervised

• Mohamed Taha, Political Communication of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Analysis of practices before and during Morsi’s presidency (2012 - 2013)
• Murali Shanmugavelan, Everyday communicative practices of an Arunthathiyar community in Tamil Nadu, India
• Natalia Theodoridou, After theatre: a metaphysical analysis of performance practices in Bali, and the problem of audiences.
• Thembi Mutch, Women in Zanzibar, their discussions around Media and Modernity

I have had the pleasure of supervising students researching a wide variety of media-related subjects located in varied national and transnational contexts. Current doctoral students are researching such diverse topics as ethnographic exploration of Indian television news; emotion and/in international news; South African journalism confronts globalization; etc.

Former students include

• Phithatsak Thisapak, Thai Internet Forum: User Practices in News Participation and the Impacts on Mainstream Jounalism (2016)
• Seyed Mohammad Madhi Khoei, The Articulation of Hegemonic Power through Television: Islamic Republic's Discources Regarding Iranian Everyday Life (2016)
• Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad, Film and Censorship in the Islamic Republic, SOAS/University of London, 2007.
• Mehdi Ghaem, Audience Uses of Video in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1996
  (President’s Prize for Best Social Science Thesis, Iran; 1997; Lecturer, University of Tehran).
• Patria Roman-Velasquez, Latin Culture in London: From Global to Local 1998 (published as The Making of Latin London, Ashgate, 1999; Lecturer, Dept. of Sociology and Communications, City University, London).
• Liz Poole, British Islam in the Media: Production and Consumption Aspects 2001 (published as Reporting Islam, IBTauris, 2002; Lecturer, Dept of Communication, Staffordshire University).
• Gill Allard, The Welsh Cultural Economy on the Net, 2002 (Lecturer, University of Glamorgan).
• Prasun Sonwalker, Violence as Not Newsworthy: The North-Eastern Provinces in the Indian Press, 2003 (Senior lecturer, University of West of England).

I moved to SOAS as Visiting Professor from the University of Leicester in 2004. While based at Leicester, I was the Director of the Centre for Mass Communication Research from 1992-1999 and its only professor. I took up the first chair in Global Media and Communications at SOAS in 2006.

For the past two decades most of my research work has been in the area of International Communication, increasingly on Globalization, and with a strong feminist orientation. My empirical research has been supported by organizations such as UNESCO, the BBC, the Broadcasting Standards Commission and the ESRC. I have consulted for UNESCO, the British Council, Article 19, the EU and the Council of Europe.

I was elected President of IAMCR (www.iamcr.org) from July 2008 for four years. I am an Associate Member of the UNESCO ORBICOM Network (www.orbicom.uqam.ca). In 2002 I became an elected member of the Royal Society of Arts (www.rsa.org)

My interests include theories of globalization, particularly in relation to gender issues and the changing configurations of the public and private. I have focused on media and processes of socio-political change and democratization in the South, with particular emphasis on the Middle East and Iran. I lived in Iran before, during and after the revolution of 1978 and out of that experience became interested in the role of alternative 'small' media and then the Internet as tools of social movements. My work on Iran continued through an ESRC-funded project that allowed me to focus on the nature of Iranian community and media formations in London, work that lies at the centre of my interest in diasporic communities and transnational media. This connects to a more general focus on issues around race, ethnicity and the media and I have conducted funded research projects on both minority ethnic audiences and minority ethnic media production in the UK.

My interest in communications and social movements has had an international focus, with a specific focus on the dynamics of global feminist politics, solidarity and participation, which is increasingly centred on the Net. I have explored transnational women’s networking and feminist politics as the emergence of global civil society dynamics. I am now writing on the gendered elements of the WSIS process. My interest in the intersection of gender, politics and communication has also had a British focus, involving work on the representation of women politicians.

My recent work on Iran has examined the role of the press as part of an emergent civil society in Iran, the particular role that women play as journalists and editors within the Iranian press environment and the emergence of a dynamic Persian-language blogosphere.

I am part of a large AHRC-funded research project under its “Diasporas” research programme called ‘Tuning In” that focuses on the BBC World Service as a cultural contact zone; www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/

For help in contacting SOAS academics and advice on services to business and the community, please contact SOAS Enterprise on +44(0)20 7898 4837 or email enterprise@soas.ac.uk.
For all press and media enquiries please call +44 (0)20 7898 4135 or email comms@soas.ac.uk

Available for

Regional Expertise

• Near and Middle East

Country Expertise

• Iran

Languages

Authored Books

Sreberny, Annabelle and Torfeh, Massoumeh (2014) Persian Service: The BBC and British Interests in Iran. London: IBTauris.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, Gohlam (2011) Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran. London: IBTauris.

Articles

Sreberny, Annabelle (2013) 'Talking soft about "soft "war'. International Journal of Communication, (7), pp 801-804.

Baumann, Gerd and Gillespie, Marie and Sreberny, Annabelle (2011) 'Transcultural journalism and the politics of translation: Interrogating the BBC World Service'. Journalism, (12) 2, pp 135-142.

Baumann, Gerd and Gillespie, Marie and Sreberny, Annabelle (2011) 'Transcultural journalism: Translations, transmissions and transformations'. Journalism, (12) 2, pp 235-238.

Torfeh, Massoumeh and Sreberny, Annabelle (2010) 'Broadcasting to Afghanistan: A history of the BBC Pashto Service'. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, (3) 2, pp 192-215.

Torfeh, Massoumeh and Sreberny, Annabelle (2010) 'The BBC Persian Service and the Islamic Revolution of 1979'. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, (3) 2, pp 216-241.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Gillespie, Marie and Baumann, Gerd (2010) 'The BBC World Service and the Middle East: Comparisons, Contrasts, Conflicts'. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, (3) 2, pp 129-136.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Gillespie, Marie and Baumann, Gerd (2010) 'the BBC world service and the middle East - past, present, and future dilemmas'. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, (3) 2, pp 279-285.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2009) 'Thirty Years on: The Iranian Summer of Discontent'. Social Text.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2008) 'The Analytic Challenges of Studying the Middle East and its Evolving Media Environment'. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, (1) 1, pp 8-23.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Torfeh, Massoumeh (2008) 'The BBC Persian Service 1941-1979'. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (28) 4, pp 515-535.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, G. (2007) 'Becoming Intellectual: The Blogestan and Public Political Space in the Islamic Republic'. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, (34) 3, pp 267-86.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2007) 'War by Other Means'. Times Higher Education Supplement.

Khiabany, Gholam and Sreberny, Annabelle (2007) 'The Politics of/in blogging in Iran'. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, (27) 3, pp 563-579.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2005) 'Contradictions of the globalising moment'. Global Media and Communication, (1) 1, pp 11-15.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2001) 'Mediated Culture in the Middle East: Diffusion, Democracy, Difficulties'. International Communication Gazette, (63) 2-3, pp 101-19.

Edited Books

Nossek, Hillel and Sreberny, Annabelle and Sonwalkar, Prasun, (eds.), (2007) Media and Political Violence. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Patterson, Chirs and Sreberny, Annabelle, (eds.), (2004) International News in the 21st Century. Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing.

Book Chapters

Sreberny, Annabelle (2014) 'Cardboard Khomeini: An Interrogation'. In: Downey, Anthony, (ed.), Uncommon Grounds:New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East. London: IBTauris, pp 291-301.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2014) 'Establishing a 'Rights Regime' in Iran: Thinking Communications, Politics and Gender Together'. In: Padovani, Claudia and Calabrese, Andrew, (eds.), Communication Rights and Social Justice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 152-163.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Torfeh, Massoumeh (2013) 'The BBC World Service from wartime propaganda to public diplomacy: the case of Iran'. In: Gillespie, Maria and Webb, Alban, (eds.), Diasporas and Diplomacy: Cosmopolitan contact zones at the BBC World Service (1932-2012). London: Routledge, pp 121-139.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2011) 'Trauma talk: reconfiguring the inside and the outside'. In: Zelizer, Barbie and Allan, Stuart, (eds.), Journalism after September 11, second edition. Abingdon: Routledge.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2011) 'Social Movement Media in 2009 Crisis (Iran)'. In: Downing, John D. H., (ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, pp 497-499.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2011) 'Epilogue - Thinking about India and Change: The BRICs and the Brats'. In: Batabyal, Somnath and Chowdhry, Anghad and Gaur, Meenu and Pohjonen, Matti, (eds.), Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change. Abingdon: Routledge, pp 218-220.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, Gholam (2009) 'The Iranian Case: What Citizens? What journalism?'. In: Allan, Stuart and Thorsen, Einar, (eds.), Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives. New York: Peter Lang.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2008) 'A Persian Letter and its global purloinings: the shifting spatialities of contemporary communication'. In: Hesmondhalgh, D. and Tonybee, J., (eds.), The Media and Social Thoery. London: Routledge.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, Gholam (2008) 'Internet in Iran - The Battle Over an Emergin Public Sphere'. In: Mclelland, M. and Goggin, G., (eds.), Internationalizing Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms. Abingdon: Routledge.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, Gholam (2008) 'Becoming Intellectual: The Blogestan and Public Political Space in the Islamic Republic'. In: Ridgeon, Lloyd, (ed.), Iranian Intellectuals 1997-2007. Abingdon: Routledge.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2007) 'The Deictic of Mediated Violence: Public Intellectuals, Journalism and Some Problems of Pronoun-ciation'. In: Nossek, H. and Sreberny, A. and Sonwalkar, P., (eds.), Media and Political Violence.. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, pp 65-79.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2006) 'Pour qui nous prenons-nous? La distance journalistique et le probleme du prenom'. In: Dayan, Daniel, (ed.), La terreur spectacle. Brussels: de Boeck, pp 229-242.

Sreberny, Annabelle (2005) 'Globalization, Communication, Democratization: Toward gender Equality'. In: Hackett, Robert and Zhao, Yuezhi, (eds.), Democratizing Global Media. Rowman and Littlefield, pp 245-268.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, G. (2004) 'The Women's Press in Contemporary Iran: Engendering the Public Sphere'. In: Sakr, N., (ed.), Women and Media in the Middle East. Power Through Self-Expression. I.B. Tauris, pp 15-38.

Sreberny, Annabelle and Patterson, Chris (2004) 'Shouting from the Rooftops: Reflections on International News in the 21st Century'. In: Paterson, Chris and Sreberny, Annabelle, (eds.), International News in the 21st Century. John Libbey Publishing, pp 3-27.

This list was last generated on Tuesday, 26th September 2017, 01:04 Europe/London.