MONTREAL/June 2, 2008—
Concordia University congratulates Communications Studies doctoral candidate William Tayeebwa for winning a prestigious Trudeau Foundation Grant. Tayeebwa has been awarded $150,000 to explore the role radio broadcast programs play in conflict resolution in the African Great Lakes region. He is one of only 15 international scholars to receive this prize in 2008.
While working as a journalist for the Daily Monitor, Uganda’s independent daily newspaper, William Tayeebwa covered the armed conflicts in the African Great Lakes region, and he experienced firsthand the profound and devastating impact of war. Back in Africa in 2003 after his graduate studies at the University of Oslo, Norway, he concentrated on the journalism training of Africa’s future generation of reporters and editors.
He did so first at Uganda’s national university (Makerere), and later in 2005 as a visiting lecturer at Rwanda’s national university (Butare). Tayeebwa tried to inject his students with the peace-journalism vaccine, so that their work may deliberately privilege the voices of peacemakers. He strongly believes that a skilled new generation of African journalists will be able to question and circumvent the structural bottlenecks imposed by corporate media, government censorship and media dependence on advertising revenue -- none of which he believes favor a peace-journalism model.
Launched in 2002, The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation funds outstanding scholars who make meaningful contributions to critical issues of the day as they relate to international relations, environment, responsible citizenship and human rights and dignity.
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Source :
Tanya Churchmuch
Senior Media Relations Advisor
Concordia University
