Benjamin Nolan is a PhD candidate working in historical and contemporary political theory. His research focuses on the politics underlying transformations in international and activist human rights discourses in the period stretching from the post-World War II moment through to the present. His critical perspective draws especially on the interwar political and theoretical writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, Simone Weil, and Walter Benjamin as they pertain to questions of history, humanity and interpretive method. He has been an Amherst Program in Critical Theory fellow since 2015. He was a fellow in the UMass Interdisciplinary Studies Institute’s 2018 Seminar, and was a 2018 summer graduate fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center. He was the founding organizer of the “Breakfasts With Du Bois” multi-disciplinary reading group that has met in the Du Bois Center every Monday morning since January 2019. He grew up between Montreal and Western Canada, speaks fluent French, and is trying his best to learn Arabic and Spanish.
Dr. Katty Alhayek is an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada. Alhayek’s research centers around themes of marginality, media, audiences, gender, intersectionality, and displacement in a transnational context. Alhayek completed her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States of America with a graduate certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. Her publications include articles in the International Journal of Communication; Feminist Media Studies; Gender, Technology and Development; Syria Studies; International Review of Qualitative Research; and Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. Alhayek's work has been awarded grants from major international organizations and universities, including the Open Society Foundations, the Social Science Research Council, and London School of Economics and Political Science. She was a MESA Global Academy Fellow between 2021 and 2022.
د. كاتي الحايك: أستاذة مساعدة في مجال الإعلام المهني ودراسات الجماهير الرقمية في جامعة تورنتو متروبوليتان بكندا. حصلت الحايك على درجة الدكتوراة في الإعلام من جامعة ماساتشوستس في أمهيرست (الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية) ودرجة ماجستير في الإعلام والتنمية من جامعة أوهايو (الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية) وإجازة في الإعلام من جامعة دمشق (سوريا). لدى الحايك خبرة عمل تتجاوز الخمسة عشر عاماً مع العديد من المنظمات والجامعات الدولية في مجال الإعلام والنسوية وحقوق الإنسان.
