Fatima El Issawi

Dr Fatima el Issawi is a British Lebanese scholar and journalist and joins the Department as Senior Lecturer in journalism from January 2015. Her expertise in the media industry with a specific focus on Middle East and North Africa (MENA) crosses journalism, public communication, policy and academia. Fatima has over fifteen years of experience as international correspondent in conflict zones.

She has covered conflicts, wars and crises in Lebanon, Post-Saddam Iraq and Jordan, for recognized international media such as Agence France Presse (AFP) and the BBC World Service (Arabic Service).

Recently, Fatima has been leading research projects on Arab media under transition in the context of the Arab Spring. Between 2012 and 2014, she was leading the project “Arab Revolutions: Media Revolutions” funded by the Open Society Foundation and based at the department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. The project provided in depth empirical analysis on the transformations in media practices and values brought by the transitional political landscape to traditional media in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and the relationship this has to the fragile democratisation processes.

She is currently leading the project Arab National Media and Politics: Democracy Revisited, looking at changes in media practices in traditional media industries in Morocco and Algeria. The project is funded by the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics and managed by the Centre.

The impact of her work extends beyond academic research and reaches civil society groups, non- governmental organizations and policy makers. The policy reports she produced- some of them in collaboration with Carnegie International- were used by media development agencies in their strategies for the region. She is a regular contributor on topics of media and politics in international media outlets including the New Yorker, Al Jazeera, CNN, Bloomberg, and Voice of America.

Fatima taught courses on critical debates related to the use of social media, conflict reporting and media production for undergraduate students in several universities across her career. She is also media trainer for journalists in the Arab region and consultant for several media development and international agencies including the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the Doha Centre for media Freedom.

Fatima holds a PhD in journalism from Paris II University. She is fluent in Arabic, French and English.