Wafa Khalfan, PhD., is an interdisciplinary global scholar of media, technology, and culture. Her critical research moves fluidly across media and cultural policy, data studies, and the political economy of digital infrastructures—bridging social science, humanities, and computational perspectives. Trained in computer science, broadcast journalism, and cultural policy, she brings a rare polymathic lens to questions of how data, technology, and power shape communication systems, governance, and identity.
Long before such topics gained regional or scholarly visibility, Dr. Khalfan’s academic work was the first and only research of its kind at the time. Her doctoral thesis at the University of Glasgow (2021) was the first systematic study of how social media reshaped local television news management in the United Arab Emirates, anticipating global debates on news platformization, algorithmic curation, and media policy reform. Nearly a decade earlier, her master’s thesis (2012) was likewise the first academic investigation of Emirati identity construction through music videos, bridging media aesthetics, cultural representation, and nation branding. Both theses were ahead of their time in methodology and vision—laying conceptual foundations for what would later become core themes in Gulf media and cultural studies.
At the heart of her scholarship lies a concern with justice and epistemic sovereignty in data-driven societies, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Gulf region. In Internet Policy Review, she interrogates the EU’s Global Gateway initiative, revealing blind spots in digital supply chains and connectivity infrastructures that sustain AI geopolitics. Her co-authored article in Taylor & Francis’ Digital Journalism extends this inquiry to the Global South, examining coding, capability-building, and innovation within nonprofit digital-native newsrooms in MENA and Latin America.
In 2023, Dr. Wafa Khalfan founded the Women, Media, and Development (WMD) research group—a multidisciplinary platform that bridges gender studies, media scholarship, and international development. The group advances intersectional and regionally grounded research on women’s roles and representations, fostering dialogue between academia, policy, and practice across the Global South.
Dr. Khalfan’s scholarship is not confined to traditional academia. Through conference contributions at major international platforms—such as IAMCR, ICA, BRISMES, and LSE Media Futures—she has introduced new frameworks including ‘The Gulf Moment’ in Arab Media and Communication Studies, and advanced debates on cyberfeminism, AI policy, and communication justice from the Global South.
She has been invited to speak at prestigious international forums, including the University of Vienna, Al Maktoum College of Higher Education (Dundee), and Deveron Projects (Scotland), addressing themes such as women and gender in the modern Middle East, media and entrepreneurship, and literature and modernism in the Gulf. Her creative writing has also been featured in the German-language poetry anthology Symphonie der Rub Al-Khali, published in collaboration with PEN Austria, reflecting her interdisciplinary reach across scholarship, art, and cultural dialogue.
Committed to collaborative and public-facing research, she co-authors studies with students on social media, creative industries, heritage, and cultural development in the UAE, and contributes reflective essays such as “Decolonising the Emirati Identity” for the LSE Middle East Centre Blog.
Dr. Wafa Khalfan’s research is deeply informed by her extensive experience across media management, production, and the public sector, enabling her to bridge academic inquiry with real-world impact. Her work combines cultural insight, technical fluency, and policy literacy to illuminate how communication systems, cultural policy, and data governance shape societies in transition—exemplifying a polycentric and polymathic approach that reimagines how knowledge, justice, and creativity circulate across global and regional contexts.