We warmly congratualte our alumnus Mehmood Ali Khan for being awarded a DAAD scholarship to pursue a PhD in Media Studies at Freie University Berlin and Philip-Marburg University.
Sharing his thoughts on the occasion and AKU-ISMC’s contribution to this significant achievement, Mehmood said: "The multidisciplinary approach of teaching at AKU-ISMC makes it a place of possibility for students from versatile disciplines to work on their area of research interest irrespective of their backgrounds. As a documentary filmmaker, AKU-ISMC opened for me new avenues of opportunity to bridge arts (filmmaking) with social sciences, and through my assignments and final thesis, I was able to present the strong connection between cinema and society in Muslim contexts. For example, in a course on modern and contemporary literature, I did my assignment on how Indian films impacted the Swahili Bongo films in screen narrative. I also investigated the Indian Ocean trade which brought film as a commodity to the East coast of Africa and how the common colonial experience of India and Africa resulted in the consumption of Indian films on the East coast of Africa. Similarly, in a course on contemporary arts, I looked into the representations of women in Iranian cinema in Pahlavi and Post-Pahlavi Iran.
"AKU-ISMC's accommodation is one of the best students' accommodations where you make friends from diverse ethnicities and nationalities. What I personally loved about the accommodation was my personal space and freedom. I spent time in the reading rooms, exercising in the gym and watching films which were part of my research and, simultaneously, my passion for cinema.
"AKU-ISMC gave me the realisation that before filmmaking, I should have studied humanities and social sciences as arts stem from having a holistic understanding of society before venturing on representing society in our creative screen narratives. Because of AKU-ISMC, I was awarded a DAAD scholarship for an individual doctorate in Media Studies supervised at the Cinepoetics (Center for Advance Film Studies) at Freie University Berlin and the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philip-Marburg University. Therefore, I would like to thank in particular Dr Farouk Topan and Professor Philip Wood for their unprecedented support at AKU-ISMC which has contributed to this achievement."
We warmly congratualte our alumnus Mehmood Ali Khan for being awarded a DAAD scholarship to pursue a PhD in Media Studies at Freie University Berlin and Philip-Marburg University.
Sharing his thoughts on the occasion and AKU-ISMC’s contribution to this significant achievement, Mehmood said: "The multidisciplinary approach of teaching at AKU-ISMC makes it a place of possibility for students from versatile disciplines to work on their area of research interest irrespective of their backgrounds. As a documentary filmmaker, AKU-ISMC opened for me new avenues of opportunity to bridge arts (filmmaking) with social sciences, and through my assignments and final thesis, I was able to present the strong connection between cinema and society in Muslim contexts. For example, in a course on modern and contemporary literature, I did my assignment on how Indian films impacted the Swahili Bongo films in screen narrative. I also investigated the Indian Ocean trade which brought film as a commodity to the East coast of Africa and how the common colonial experience of India and Africa resulted in the consumption of Indian films on the East coast of Africa. Similarly, in a course on contemporary arts, I looked into the representations of women in Iranian cinema in Pahlavi and Post-Pahlavi Iran.
"AKU-ISMC's accommodation is one of the best students' accommodations where you make friends from diverse ethnicities and nationalities. What I personally loved about the accommodation was my personal space and freedom. I spent time in the reading rooms, exercising in the gym and watching films which were part of my research and, simultaneously, my passion for cinema.
"AKU-ISMC gave me the realisation that before filmmaking, I should have studied humanities and social sciences as arts stem from having a holistic understanding of society before venturing on representing society in our creative screen narratives. Because of AKU-ISMC, I was awarded a DAAD scholarship for an individual doctorate in Media Studies supervised at the Cinepoetics (Center for Advance Film Studies) at Freie University Berlin and the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philip-Marburg University. Therefore, I would like to thank in particular Dr Farouk Topan and Professor Philip Wood for their unprecedented support at AKU-ISMC which has contributed to this achievement."
