Dr. Sahar Khamis and Dr. Catherine Knight Steele have been selected as M.O.L.D Fellows for 2022-2023.

M.O.L.D: Mellon/Maryland Opportunities for Leadership Development

Congratulations to Dr. Sahar Khamis and Dr. Catherine Knight Steele, associate professors in the Department of Communication for being selected for the 2022-2023 UMD CP cohort of the Breaking the M.O.L.D. Initiative. 

Breaking the M.O.L.D. Initiative is a unique professional development program designed to create a pipeline to senior leadership in higher education for faculty members of color and women from the arts and humanities, as well as others with a proven record of promoting diversity within the academy. Supported by a generous 3.1 million-dollar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this initiative is led by 6 women in senior leadership serving as principal investigators (PI), five of whom are Black. Breaking the M.O.L.D. is a partnership between three institutions within one system: University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), University of Maryland at College Park (UMD CP) and Morgan State University (MSU).  Learn more about the program here: https://mold.umbc.edu/ 

Dr. Sahar Khamis, Associate Professor

Dr. Sahar Khamis is an expert on Arab and Muslim media, and the former Head of the Mass Communication and Information Science Department in Qatar University. She is a former Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago.

She is the co-author of the books: Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement and Citizen Journalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and the co-editor of Arab Women’s Activism and Socio-Political Transformation: Unfinished Gendered Revolutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Additionally, she authored and co-authored numerous book chapters, journal articles and conference papers, regionally and internationally.

Dr. Khamis is a media commentator and analyst, a public speaker, a human rights commissioner in the Human Rights Commission in Montgomery County, Maryland, and a radio host, who presents a monthly radio show on “U.S. Arab Radio” (the first Arab-American radio station broadcasting in the U.S. and Canada).

You can learn more about Dr. Khamis at: https://communication.umd.edu/directory/sahar-khamis
https://saharkhamis.wordpress.com/

Dr. Catherine Steele, Associate Professor

Dr. Catherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland – College Park and was the Founding Director of the African American Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum). She now directs the Black Communication and Technology lab as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism Network. Dr. Steele also serves as the Director of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies in the Arts and Humanities.

Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, with a specific emphasis on African American culture and discourse and new media. Dr. Steele’s research on the Black blogosphere, digital discourses of resistance and joy, and digital Black feminism has been published in such journals as Social Media + Society, Feminist Media Studies, and Television and New Media. Her book Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press), examines the relationship between Black women and technology, and was the 2022 recipient of the Association of Internet Research 2022 Nancy Baym Book Award.

You can learn more about Dr. Steele here: http://www.catherineknightsteele.com