Walid Al-Saqaf

Walid Al-Saqaf is a researcher in journalism, new media, and Internet studies, and has an academic background in computer engineering. Upon obtaining his master’s degree in global journalism, he was appointed as the director of the Global Journalism masters program at Örebro University, where he was studying Internet censorship with an emphasis on the Arab world. Among his projects is Alkasir for Internet Censorship Mapping and Circumvention, a platform used by users in many countries—including Syria and Iran—to access blocked websites. He is also a TED and ICANN fellow and is involved in research with the Web Foundation’s Web Index and Open Data Barometer. Walid is finalizing his doctoral dissertation on Internet censorship in the Arab world and is expected to defend his thesis in 2014. He is a member of the Cyber Stewards Network.