Aliaa Dakroury holds a B.A. (Cairo University); M.A. and PhD (Carleton University) all in Communication studies. Her work involves the examination of communication and human rights. Her doctoral dissertation tracks the intellectual roots of the right to communicate idea in the communications public policy in Canada during the late 1960s.

She is an active member of many human rights organizations, such as the right to communicate group, IFEX, WACC, among others. Her areas of research include human rights, communication history, Canadian policy, diaspora, and Islamic culture.

Aliaa is the recipient of the Van Horne Award from the Canadian Communication Association, in its 25th annual conference in June 2005, London-Ontario for her paper “Whose right to communicate? Al-Jazeera or CRTC”.

She is currently the guest editor of a special issue of the Global Media Journal-American Edition on the “The Right to Communicate: History, current debates, and future challenges” Fall 2008.

Aliaa was recently nominated as honorary expert in Islamic studies in the Islamic Resource Bank (IRB): A joint project of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, the Association of Muslim Social Scientists and the International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Selected Publications:

• “CBC’s Little Mosque on the Prairies and the right of “others” to communicate in Canada”. Media Development: Journal of the World Association for Christian Communication, 3/2008
• “Blogs and the right to communicate: Towards creating a space-less public sphere?” In International Symposium on Technology and Society proceedings 2008 Fredericton, New Brunswick: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—co-authored with William Birdsall.
• “Anti- and counter-terrorism: Snagging the practice of a human Right to Communicate”. In Information-MFCSIT’06 (pp. 35-38). Cork, Ireland: National University of Ireland, 2006.
• “Communication and the rise of early Islamic civilization (570-632 A.D.)”. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 23(2), 63-83, 2006.
• “Pluralism and the right to communicate in Canada”. Media Development: Journal of the World Association for Christian Communication, LIII(1), 36-40, 2006.
• “The Arab-Canadian consumption of Disaporic media”. Journal of International Communication, 12(2), 35-51, 2006.
• “Toward a philosophical approach of the hermeneutics of the Qur'an: To read, understand, think and reflect ... or just to follow”. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 23(1), 15-34, 2006.
• “Whose right to communicate: Al-Jazeera or CRTC?” Global Media Journal -- American Edition, 4(7), 2005.
• “Representation of Afghan women rights in Canadian newspapers”. Journal of Culture, Language, and Representation, 2, 59-73, 2005.
• “Who owns the medium owns the message? The ambiguity of the right to communicate in the age of convergence”. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 5(2), 2005.
• “Globalization and the right to communicate: Utopia or prison?” Journal of InterGroup Relations, 32(3), 40-60, 2005.

Recent Conference Papers:

• “Present At The Creation: Telecommission Studies and the Intellectual Origins of the Right to Communicate in Canada (1969-71).” The Canadian Communication Association Annual Conference: Thinking beyond Borders. Global ideas: Global Values. British Columbia, June 4- 6, 2008, University of British Columbia.
• “Direct from ‘Homeland’ to Home: Arab Disaporic Media and the Passage of “Al-Watan” to Canada.” The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 41st Annual Conference, November 17-20, 2007. Montréal, Canada—co-authored with Mahmoud Eid.
• “Telecommission Studies (1969-1971): A History of the Right to Communicate in Canada.” Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2nd Biennial Conference on Law, Culture and Humanities. October 12-14, 2007. Carleton University, Ottawa.
• “The right to communicate: A new horizon for Communication Studies”. The Future of Communication Studies: Toward A Critical Remapping Of The Field. The Annual Conference of the Communication Graduate Caucus of Carleton University, March 15-16, 2007, Ottawa, Canada.
• “A Right to Insult?! The Danish Cartoons Controversy and the Right to Communicate in Islam”. The 2nd Canadian conference of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS)-Canada. Islam: Tradition and Modernity. Organized by The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS)-Canada & The Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, November 4th, 2006. Toronto, University of Toronto.
• “Anti- and counter-terrorism: Snagging the practice of a human Right to Communicate.” The 4th International Conference on Information, Information’06, and the 4th Irish Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science and Information Technology’06, MFCSIT’06, Information-MFCSIT’06 (August 1-5, 2006). University College Cork, Cork, Ireland: International Information Institute, Tokyo, Japan and National University of Ireland, Cork, Ireland.
• “A right to be “different”: Diversity and The right to communication in Islam,” The fifth International Conference on Diversity in Organisations, Communities and nations. Institute of Ethnic Administrators, June-July 2005, China.
• “Patterns of Arabic Taste and Popular Culture: A Social Reading of Arabic advertising,” The 14th Annual KSU Cultural Studies Conference, Visual Culture: Image Imagination Ideology. March 2005, Kansas State University.
• “Pluralism and the Right to Communicate in the Canadian ‘Multi-Culturalism’,” the 18th Biennial Conference of the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association: Toward Social Justice: Illusions, Realities, Possibilities, October 2005, Ottawa, Canada.
• “Depictions of Political, Ethnic, and Religious Others in Al Jazeera and LBCI News Programs: A Preliminary Inquiry.” Arab-U.S. Media Forum in Dubai, Covering the Other: Intolerance and Bigotry in the American and Arab Media, December 2-5, 2005, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, sponsored by Aspen Institute—co-authored with Karim Karim.
• “Marriage of old and new media: An assessment of media ownership and control of the AOL Time Warner merger in the age of convergence,” The International Conference on Intellectual Property Rights, Communication and the Public Domain in the Asia-Pacific Region, December 2004, Australia.
• “Psychological Analysis of the Role of the Diasporic Media: A Survey of the Egyptian Community in Ottawa,” The 17th Biennial Conference, Canadian Ethnic Studies under the title Ethnicity: Space & Place, October 2003, Alberta