Building Transdisciplinary Linkages: A Partnership between ASU and Punjab University (Lahore)

Funder: 

U.S. Department of State through its Pakistan embassy

Pakistan’s development sector is well established and diverse—ranging from extensive state-managed institutions and agencies to international and local NGOs, academic scholarship, professional training programs, and multiple private and public media platforms (including 69 foreign satellite channels and nearly 100 private radio stations). Given the diversity of actors, stake holders, and sources of public information; the multiple development planning environments (including federal-region, national-international, and public-private); and assorted types of development needs and projects, there is a strategic need for advancing development studies and mass communication as comprehensive scholarly fields in Pakistan’s universities.

To strengthen, deepen, and internationalize the professional and scholarly contributions of University of the Punjab’s faculty in the fields of mass communication and development studies, ASU’s Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in conjunction with PU’s Institute of Social and Cultural Studies and Institute of Communication Studies, are partnering on a comprehensive three-year project that will lead to 1) advances in curriculum development and teaching, 2) socially embedded research and publication, 3) international scholarly engagement, and 4) global networks for enhancing ASU’s and PU’s international impact.

The partnership will focus on three themes -- Public Media and Development Journalism, Socio-Cultural Impact of Rapid Urbanization, and Pluralism and Coexistence for Conflict Transformation – that will involve a series of seminars, exchanges, workshops and collaboration, culminating in an international conference in the final year of the project. 

Project Director and Principal Investigator

Chad Haines, Assistant Professor of Religious and Global Studies

Project Team and Co-PIs

Yasmin Saikia, Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies and Professor of History 

William Silcock, Director of Cronkite Global Initiatives and Professor of Journalism

Kristin Gilger, Associate Dean, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Muhammad Zakria Zakir, Dean of Faculty of Social and Behavioral Studies and Director of the Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, Punjab University (Lahore)