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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. 

By virtue of our specialist expertise, we have an unparalleled knowledge of different non-Western cultures that conventional global media programmes simply cannot offer. Our doctoral students engage in cutting-edge research on issues of global concern – such as digital authoritarianism, digital hate cultures, social change, rights and global solidarities across race, gender and class.

Membership to CGMC is open to all academic staff at SOAS. Individuals based in other higher education institutions in the UK with an interest in the study of global media and digital communication from a non-Western perspective as well as students at SOAS can join our mailing list for information about events at the Centre.

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. 

Our research topics include: political communication, digital media and activism, political economy of news media; social movements; migration; diasporas; ethnic minorities; transnational communities; digital technologies and development and digital cultures in the Global South. Our research students work on a variety of topics including media histories, gender and media, documentary and refugees, conflict and journalism practice, feminist activism, solidarity movements and the media and political communication of non-state actors.

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.

The PhD in Global Media and Communication is a research degree involving original research on some aspect of contemporary theoretical and global issues in global media and digital cultures in diverse contexts as well as developed critique of Eurocentrism.

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.