Participants in the meeting hosted by QatarDebate.
Doha: QatarDebate, a member of Qatar Foundation, hosted the second meeting of the world’s first academic programme ‘QatarDebate Fellowship’ recently, in the context of seeking to advance and promote academic scientific research and the diversify aspects of regional and international partnerships.
The meeting focused on presenting academic research projects after fulfilling the conditions for funding, where 11 researchers presented their projects from various scientific fields.
It is worth noting that the programme is an implementation of the fellowship initiative adopted by QatarDebate through cooperation efforts regional and international partners in order to make way for academic creativity with distinguished group of academics in the fields of innovation, conflict resolution, and elevating pressure on societies.
The Qatar Debate Fellowship is a unique opportunity for researchers, academics and entrepreneurs around the world to contribute to creating developing knowledge in the field of debate and its intersections with various disciplines at the theoretical, scientific and procedural levels.
The programme will offer a fully funded two-year research grant to complete and publish their research in affiliation with QatarDebate.
It is worth noting that the first meeting was in the United States of America on the sidelines of the American Universities Championship for Arabic Debates.
Dr. Hayat Abdullah Marafi, Executive Director of QatarDebate, said, “The fellowship programme came a decade after the establishment of the centre and as part of our relentless endeavour to establish academic research platforms for debates within various disciplines and to unleash researchers and innovators to employ and publish their work after we found that regional and global communication in this field is limited.”
Dr. Hayat added, “We seek to be part of the movement that promotes publishing academic research to create a supportive environment for inspiration and motivation with providing opportunities for others to join wider scientific networks.
“To extend the fields of knowledge in building on solid scientific research foundation centred around debate with a prolific product that enriches Arab and Western libraries and ensures cultural and cognitive sustainable resources for future generations.” Fellows presented their distinctive topics in various subtopics stemming from debate. Among them, Dr. Abdul Gabbar Al Sharafi is working on “Rhetorical Strategies in Arabic Debating and Argumentation: A Corpus-based Approach” .
He said, “The research project aims to build a digital blog from a large number of Arab debates organised by QatarDebate over the past years and to prepare it digitally for analysis and investigation of rhetorical and argumentative strategies used by debaters to convince judges and audiences.
“In addition, the importance of the research is highlighted as it deals with the cultural and linguistic dimensions, as it uses contemporary debate material for the first time in the methodology of the digital code and computer-processing to identify the strategies used and classify them according to the classifications followed in the relevant debate literature. In addition, the research will conclude the educational findings and recommendations related to the aspects of debate training and their applicability and integration into our educational curricula.”
