About
Scholar of Media, Political Communication and Higher Education
Dr Wesam Amer is a scholar of media, political communication and higher education. His work is organised around two interconnected pillars: digital political communication, media and conflict; and higher education, knowledge and scholasticide. His research and academic experience span Palestine, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Dr Wesam Amer is a scholar of media, political communication and higher education. His interdisciplinary research examines how communication technologies, political discourse and institutional structures shape power, conflict and knowledge production. His work focuses on two interconnected areas: digital political communication, media and conflict, social media, artificial intelligence and hypermedia warfare; and higher education, scholasticide, academic resilience and the reconstruction of universities, particularly in Gaza. He has held academic and research positions at Cambridge, Harvard, Newcastle and Hamburg, and served as Dean at Gaza University. He holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Hamburg.
His work is organised around two major, interconnected areas — two dimensions of a single academic agenda concerned with how power, technology, conflict and institutional structures shape communication, knowledge production and social transformation.
Pillar One
This research examines how political actors communicate, construct narratives, mobilise audiences and exercise influence within changing media environments, and how digital platforms, algorithms and artificial intelligence shape the production, circulation, visibility and reception of political communication.
Explore research →Pillar Two
This research examines how universities and knowledge institutions are affected by conflict, how academic communities sustain themselves under conditions of disruption, and how higher education can be restored and transformed beyond the reconstruction of physical infrastructure.
Explore research →One integrated agenda
In the media sector, his research examines political communication, digital infrastructures, narratives, visibility and power. In the education sector, it examines knowledge institutions, scholasticide, academic resilience, institutional recovery and epistemic autonomy. Together, these areas form a single integrated academic agenda — concerned with how power, technology, conflict and institutional structures shape communication, knowledge production and social transformation.
Dr Wesam Amer is a scholar of media, communication and higher education whose work examines how communication technologies, media systems, political discourse and institutional structures shape power, conflict and knowledge production. His interdisciplinary research connects two closely related areas: media and political communication, and higher education, knowledge and scholasticide. Across both, he is concerned with how political and institutional power operates, how societies communicate and produce knowledge under conditions of conflict and transformation, and how media and educational institutions respond to profound technological and political change.
His academic trajectory has developed through research, teaching, institutional leadership and international collaboration across Palestine, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. His work combines critical and interdisciplinary approaches, drawing on media and communication studies, critical discourse analysis, digital media research, political communication and higher education studies.
A central strand of Wesam's research examines the relationship between media, political communication and power. His work investigates how political actors construct and circulate narratives, develop communication strategies, mobilise audiences and negotiate public meaning across traditional and digital media environments.
His earlier research focused on media representations, war reporting and political discourse, particularly in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the wider Middle East. His doctoral research examined war reporting in the international press, building on his wider interest in how media institutions frame conflict, represent political actors and shape public understanding of international events.
Over time, this research expanded towards digital political communication and the transformation of political discourse through social media and networked communication. He has examined how political and non-state actors use digital platforms to communicate, mobilise supporters, construct identities and engage in strategic narrative production. His interests include Islamist movements, political and strategic communication, digital activism and the changing relationship between media, conflict and geopolitical contestation.
More recently, his research has increasingly addressed the role of platforms, algorithms and artificial intelligence in shaping contemporary communication. Rather than treating digital technologies as neutral channels, he investigates how platform infrastructures, algorithmic systems, content moderation and mechanisms of visibility influence the production, circulation and reception of political communication.
His current research explores hypermedia warfare and AI-mediated communication in contemporary conflict. It considers how political actors adapt their communicative strategies to platform environments, how visual and multimodal content circulates across digital networks, and how technological infrastructures influence the visibility and amplification of political narratives.
This work informs his developing approach to Techno-Discursive Critical Analysis (TDCA), which connects the critical interpretation of language, narratives and multimodal communication with the technological infrastructures through which discourse is produced, distributed and made visible. It provides a framework for examining the interaction between political strategy, communicative adaptation, platform governance and algorithmic visibility.
A second major strand of Wesam's academic work concerns higher education, knowledge production and the institutional consequences of war, occupation and political violence. This research examines universities not simply as physical infrastructures or providers of education, but as essential institutions for knowledge production, cultural continuity, professional development and collective futures.
His work on Gaza focuses on the destruction of educational institutions and the wider consequences for academic communities, students, researchers and knowledge systems. It engages with the concept of scholasticide to examine the destruction of educational life and institutions, while developing a broader perspective on how higher education can be sustained, recovered and reconstructed.
An important part of this work is the development of the concept of de-scholasticide, which shifts attention from documenting destruction towards the intellectual, institutional and practical conditions required to restore and transform higher education. It considers how universities can recover beyond the reconstruction of buildings, addressing the restoration of academic communities, institutional capacity, knowledge infrastructures, research environments and educational opportunities.
His research in this area explores institutional resilience, academic continuity, human-capital regeneration, Palestinian leadership in reconstruction, epistemic self-determination and the role of international academic solidarity. It also considers how higher education institutions can move beyond emergency recovery towards more sustainable, transformative and locally grounded models of development.
Alongside his research, Wesam has extensive experience in higher education teaching, academic management and institutional development, including service as Dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication and Languages at Gaza University. His teaching and supervision experience spans media and communication studies, digital media, media and society, political communication, visual communication, social media and research methods.
His approach connects critical academic inquiry with contemporary media practices and encourages students to understand communication within its wider technological, political and institutional contexts.
See Teaching and Supervision →
Wesam's academic career includes research and academic appointments in several international institutions across the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States and beyond, developed through fellowships including the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Newcastle University (2017–2019), a Fulbright Research Scholarship at Harvard University (2022), CARA/IIE-Scholar Rescue Fund support at the University of Cambridge and a guest research position at the Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg (from December 2023). He was also the founder and first Chair of the Middle East Chapter of the Marie Curie Alumni Association, contributing to the development of academic networks and research connections across the region and internationally.
His international research experience has enabled him to develop collaborations across academic institutions and disciplinary communities, contributing to wider discussions on media, political communication, conflict, digital technologies and higher education.
Although media and political communication and higher education may appear to be distinct academic fields, they are connected by a common intellectual concern: understanding how power, technology, conflict and institutional structures shape the conditions under which societies communicate, produce knowledge and organise their futures.
In the media sector, his research examines how political actors communicate, how digital infrastructures shape public discourse, and how technological systems influence visibility, influence and power.
In the education sector, his research examines how knowledge institutions are affected by conflict and political violence, how academic communities maintain intellectual and professional continuity, and how higher education can be reconstructed in ways that restore institutional capacity and strengthen epistemic autonomy.
Together, these areas form an integrated academic and professional agenda connecting communication, political power, technology, education and knowledge transformation.