We are delighted to announce the recipients of IAFOR grants and scholarships for The 17th Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film (MediAsia2026) to be held in Kyoto Research Park, Kyoto, Japan, and online between November 9-13, 2026.
In total, we received 99 scholarship applications.
Launched in 2016, IAFOR’s grants and scholarships programme provides financial support to PhD students and early career academics, with the aim of helping them pursue research excellence and achieve their academic goals through interdisciplinary study and interaction.
Our warmest congratulations go to the following scholarship recipients.
IAFOR Scholarship Recipients
Shela Kusumaningtyas, University of Indonesia, Indonesia
Performing the Politics of Helping: Poverty, Compassion, and Platform Populism in Dedi Mulyadi’s YouTube Videos
Ms Shela Kusumaningtyas is an LPDP awardee and a postgraduate student in Communication Science at Universitas Indonesia (UI). Her academic interests centre on communication and media studies, with a focus on how meaning, identity, and power are produced through digital platforms and cultural texts in Indonesia. Employing qualitative approaches—particularly dramaturgical analysis and Roland Barthes’ semiotics—she examines political performativity on social media, public policy communication, and the mediation of gender and religiosity in popular culture and institutional messaging. She also explores interpersonal communication and role conflict among women with multiple roles within collectivist and patriarchal cultural settings. Her work contributes to critical and interpretive debates on platform-mediated public communication, narrative strategies, and symbolic contestation in contemporary Indonesian society.
Annapurna Sinha, Binus University International, Indonesia
Reclaiming the Monstrous: The Female Gaze and Narrative Intervention in Contemporary Indonesian Horror
Ms Annapurna Sinha is a PhD research scholar at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Before joining the PhD program at the University of Hyderabad, India, she completed her M.Phil. in Media Studies from Makhanlal National University of Journalism and Communication, India. Prior to entering higher studies, she worked in mainstream newspapers for three years, which included reputed names like Economic Times, Business Standard, and Business Bhaskar, after getting a post-graduate diploma in Journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi. She holds dual Master’s degrees in the subjects of Economics and Mass Communication and Journalism. She entered into higher studies and chose to research in the area of communication. Her research forte includes communication for development and social change and community media. Currently, she is working on community newspapers in her doctoral research work.
About IAFOR’s Grants and Scholarships
IAFOR is dedicated to helping young scholars achieve their research and academic goals, while also encouraging them to apply the principles of interdisciplinary study to their work. IAFOR offers travel and accommodation grants and full or partial scholarships covering conference registration fees to PhD students and early career academics who might not otherwise have the financial resources to be able to attend our academic conferences.
Awards are based on the appropriateness of the educational opportunity in relation to the applicant’s field of study, financial need, and contributions to their community and to IAFOR’s mission of interdisciplinarity. Scholarships will be awarded based on availability of funds from IAFOR and will vary with each conference. The Organising Committee of the relevant IAFOR conference will award scholarships to eligible applicants who have submitted exceptional abstracts that have passed the blind peer review process and been accepted for presentation at one of our conferences.
For further information on IAFOR grants and scholarships, please visit the Grants and Scholarships page of the IAFOR website.
2026 Grants and Scholarships
Grants and scholarships are still available for IAFOR conferences with open abstract submission deadlines. If you are eligible for an IAFOR grant or scholarship and would like to be considered, please submit your abstract to the conference you would like to attend and select the checkbox for the relevant award during the submission process.
