Zaharom Nain is an associate professor of communications at the Centre for Policy Research and International Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia. He has been teaching at USM for more than two decades, after receiving his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Communication Studies from Coventry University and the University of Leicester, England.
He is co-editor of two books, Communication and Development: The Freirean Connection (Hampton: 2001) and Who Owns The Media: Global Trends and Local Resistances (Zed/Southbound: 2004) and has authored more than 80 book chapters, journal articles and conference papers.
He has been a consultant to the Geneva-based United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Malaysian agencies such as PETRONAS and the Malaysian Institute for Economic Research (MIER).
He was awarded a Fulbright Professorship to lecture in the University of California, San Diego (1998-1999), a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship to conduct research at Sophia University, Tokyo (1995) and was a Visiting Fellow in 2004 at Simon Fraser University (Canada), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (USA) and the University of Utah (USA).
His background and research interests are in the sociology of communications and the political economy of the media. He is presently co-editing a volume of critical studies on the media and popular culture in Asia and conducting research on the media and Malaysia-Singapore relationships. This October, he will again be in the United States as a Fulbright Specialist, principally in the state of Vermont, speaking in a variety of settings.
He believes he writes better than he speaks, having contributed columns to Malaysian newspapers such as The Star and the New Straits Times, and alternative media, such as Malaysiakini, The Nutgraph and Aliran Monthly.
He is a member of Aliran and is privileged to have served on Aliran’s exco and editorial board for a couple of terms.
