Ibrahim Omara

Ibrahim Emara is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Faculty of Arts-Tanta University in Egypt and a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow at The School of Communication at AmericanUniversity. He holds both MA and PhD degrees in Mass Media from the Faculty of Mass Communication-Cairo University, and he is the first visually impaired scholar in Egypt to teach and conduct research in journalism. For over ten years, he taught several undergraduate classes, including Media Theories, Journalism History, Newspaper Layout, Newspaper Editing, and Media Translation. From 2016 to 2018, he was awarded a national scholarship to conduct research at The Hussman School of Journalism and Media at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Dr. Emara’s research focuses on the use of mass media among people with visual impairment. His master’s thesis and PhD
is pioneering academic work that examines the newspapers created for blind people, which he named Braille journalism. Braille journalism was also featured in his article published in the Journal of Global Communication in 2017 as well as many media and communication conferences including the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Mapping the Magazine, and The Popular Culture Association, to name a few. In Egypt, he was selected to participate in The Presidential Leadership Program (PLP) in 2015, which is the nation’s top preparation course in management and public policy. Also, he authored several articles on Al-Ahram, Egypt’s leading national daily newspaper. The core mission of his articles was to defend the rights of people with disability with the aim of achieving equality, inclusion, and accessibility.

Areas of interest

• braille magazines;
• magazines for the blind;
• accessibility of media;
• new media and disability.

Affiliations

Media department, Faculty of Arts, Tanta University.