Team Qatar's former member and current anthropology scholar in the University of Sussex Rashid Al Rumaihi.
Doha: QatarDebate Center, part of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, unveiled on Tuesday the winners of membership of the first edition of its fellowship programme, aimed at sponsoring and supporting 12 research projects from all over the world, in contribution to the development of knowledge and influence in debating and other linked academic disciplines.
The first phase of the race for membership in this two-year long round witnessed tough competition among 177 applications. The winners were announced following 30 interviews with candidates who moved to the shortlist phase.
The winning projects covered significant research areas like computerised studies on debate discourse from linguistic and structural perspectives and the development of artificial intelligence tools in Arab-language debates.
Other projects dealt with Islamic heritage debates including indexing and investigating some of the most important related Arab manuscripts, comparative studies between contemporary and Islamic heritage debate theories and intercultural dialogue in the Andalusian Islamic heritage.
Some educationally-oriented projects studied the impacts of debates on non-Arab speakers, and the design of mechanisms to adopt debating in the field of engineering and applied sciences, while others focused on social studies that compared debates in Arab and non-Arab societies.
For the Expert Affiliates category, a group of prominent researchers and academics were selected including Yale University's Professor Jonas Elbousty, Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; Associate Professor of Literary Criticism in Windsor University Dr. Pierre Boulos, Associate Professor in Translation Studies in Sultan Qaboos University Abdul Gabbar Al Sharafi, University of Hassan II Casablanca's Professor Fadoua El Hezeti of Andalusian Studies.
For PhD Candidates category, the list of winners comprised Vrije Universiteit Brussel's Researcher Ali Al Zawqari, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals' Professor Mohamed Hassan Baoum, and Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakif University's Researcher on Islamic heritage Abdul Samad Kojak.
Five additional affiliates were added to the fellowship program's Young Researchers with Distinguished Potentials" category to empower and encourage them to produce established researches in debates. The list consisted of Tunisian Moez Zahri, specialist in international relations, Indian Logic Lecturer Mohammed Komat, Georgetown University Alumnus Mohamed Al Oqda, Team Qatar's former member and current anthropology scholar in the UK's University of Sussex Rashid Al Rumaihi, as well as Harvard University scholar Delaini Harley.
After being globally renowned for educational activities and competitive debating tournaments. The Qatar Debate Fellowship Program serves as a key step toward further wide-ranging academic and research activities for all those interested in debates, critical thinking and the dissemination of the Arab language worldwide.
QatarDebate seeks to sign new partnerships with research and academic institutions inside Qatar and abroad aimed at exchanging expertise and providing further opportunities for its affiliates.
