Emerging Scholar Awards
The program recognizes both In-Person Emerging Scholars and Online-Only Emerging Scholars, ensuring that researchers unable to travel can still hold a visible and valued role in the conference. Across all formats, Emerging Scholars participate fully in the life of the event: they chair parallel sessions, help guide and sustain discussion, and serve as bridges between established and early-career colleagues from different regions, institutions, and disciplines.
As part of CGScholar’s Event (KX) environment, Emerging Scholars contribute to a wider knowledge experience that links conference activity, community engagement, and publication. Their work is shared through Presentation Pages, digital media, and discussion spaces; they receive structured support to develop their research through the Network’s journals and book imprint; and they gain sustained visibility within the worldwide scholarly community formed around the Research Network.
The Award includes complimentary conference registration and Research Network membership, along with formal recognition during the conference proceedings. Emerging Scholars enter a supportive, scholar-led community in which they can build connections across disciplines, regions, and generations of researchers. Professional development, mentoring encounters, and opportunities for collaboration are integrated into the conference and the Network’s year-round activities.
Award recipients are expected to: attend an orientation and training session (typically the day before the conference), and participate fully throughout the conference by fulfilling assigned chairing and discussion-leading responsibilities.
The Emerging Scholar Award is open to researchers currently enrolled in a graduate studies program or identifying as early-career scholars in a field relevant to the conference. Applicants should demonstrate strong potential for scholarly contribution and a commitment to participating in the collaborative ethos of the Network.
For each conference, a small number of Emerging Scholar Awards are given to outstanding graduate students and emerging scholars who have an active research interest in the conference themes. Emerging Scholars perform a critical role in the online conference by commenting and engaging the parallel sessions, and presenting their own research papers. The 2026 Emerging Scholar Award recipients are as follows:
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Dewi Tan is a media artist and researcher with a background in filmmaking, anthropology, and environmental science. Through research-driven art practices, her works tackle sociocultural and environmental issues surrounding modernity, urban development conflicts, waste, consumption culture, anthropogenic disasters, and speculative futures. She is pursuing her Ph.D. at the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore where her research looks at how shopping malls in Singapore participate in climate narratives and ecological discourses.
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
As a media-trained artist with a background in traditional painting, Huiying focuses her research on her artistic practice and professional experiences in animation, education, and painting. Her current and previous roles—including part-time lecturer at a local polytechnic and university, producer at a local advertising and animation studio, and 2D visual effects artist at a Hollywood post-production house—have given her over a decade of industry and teaching experience, which continues to inform her research.
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Ong Kian Peng is a Singapore-based media artist and researcher whose work explores the intersection of art, technology, and ecology, with particular interest in generative systems, immersive media, and more-than-human futures. His practice investigates climate imaginaries, machine agency, and cosmotechnical thought through installation, film, sound, and virtual reality. He has presented and exhibited internationally at SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, the Singapore Biennale, and has been recognised by the Lumen Prize. A recipient of the President’s Young Talent Award, Ong is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
Tilburg University, Netherlands
Pratiksha is a Post Doctoral Researcher at Tilburg University for the EU Horizon 2020 project AI4POL and is affiliated with Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) and Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC). She holds a PhD in consumer protection and data rights on collaborative economy platforms from UC Louvain, Belgium. She was also the legal researcher for the PROSECO Project (Platform Regulations and Operations in the Sharing Economy). She has a double degree in Business Administration and Law and a Masters in Corporate and Commercial Law from India. Her second masters is a Master of Corporate Law, University of Cambridge, UK. She is a qualified lawyer in her home state of Karnataka and the Bar Council of India. Her research interests include digital regulation, data and consumer law, AI and regulation, comparative law, and global studies with perspectives from the Global South.
University of the Philippines Los Banos, Philippines
Princess Catherine L. Pabellano is a Filipino educator, researcher, and writer. She took her Master of Arts in Journalism at the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication and completed her Bachelor of Arts in Communication at Southern Luzon State University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines, Los Baños. Her work focuses on media framing and communication, with particular attention to how news narratives shape public discourse. She explores the intersections of media, politics, and everyday life. Beyond the academe, she maintains a Medium account where she publishes her creative works and random musings.
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abhisree Bhattacharya is a communication science student researcher at the Universiteit van Amsterdam with a specialisation in political communication, health communication, and digital media literacy. She broadened her interdisciplinary perspective at the University of Queensland, in Australia, researching society, politics, and culture. An academic innovator, she designed an original course on understanding algorithmic bias in AI platforms in healthcare, incorporating that into honours curriculum for university students. Her research interests lie at the intersection of algorithmic and AI bias in media, mis-and-disinsformation crisis and intersectionality in media and society. Beyond academics, she has been recognised as a guest speaker on student activism and brings a multidisciplinary, globally informed perspective to her scholarly engagements.
University of the Philippines Visayas, Philippines
Aljohn T. Torreta is an academician, broadcast journalist, and DRRM advocate. He is born and raised in the coastal community in the Municipality of Tigbauan, Province of Iloilo, Philippines. He finished his Master of Development Communication at the University of the Philippines Open University and his undergraduate program, Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Media Studies at the University of the Philippines Visayas.
Mr. Torreta is a full-time faculty member at the Division of Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences at the University of the Philippines Visayas teaching radio broadcasting, journalism, and other communication-related subjects. Concomitantly, he serves as the Station Programmer at DYUP 102.7 FM, the educational radio station of UP Visayas, and the Project Development Assistant for Crisis Management of the university chancellor. With his interest in broadcast journalism and disaster resiliency, he specializes in development communication and risk communication.
Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil
Laís Cavalcante is a PhD candidate and holds a Master's degree in Communication from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), where she also graduated in Media Studies. Her research focuses on the intersections between images, conflicts, violence, body, and territory, through narrative and discursive analyses of media practices. In 2023, she defended her Master's dissertation, entitled “Militian Emergency on TV: An Analysis of Clashes Over Meaning in Rio de Janeiro's TV Newscasts on Rede Globo”. Currently, in her doctoral research, she investigates the imagetic narratives of media coverage surrounding two cases: the Complexo do Alemão and Penha Massacre (Rio de Janeiro, 2025) and the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students (Mexico, 2014), proposing a comparative analysis between the cases.
Cross River University of Technology, Calabar, Nigeria
Onwugamba Kajetan Ifeanyi is a rights activist, journalist, academic researcher and humanist. He is a graduate of Mass Communication and a fellow of the International Communication Association. He has presented academic research papers in numerous conferences and has also bagged multiple awards. His research covers areas like: Destitution, poverty, Poor education, Out-of-school-children, Generative AI, mis/disinformation, investigative journalism and media apathy. In 2025, he was selected among the 100 global leaders to participate in “Global-Leadership-Challenge” organised by St. Gallen Symposium and University of Oxford; and has also represented his country as a delegate (2024/2025) at the World Bank Group Youth summits.
Columbia University, United States
Ali Raj is a historian of sound and communications, with a keen interest in rhetoric, aesthetics and the intellectual history of modern Muslim thought. He was an editor and reporter for over eight years, working in television production as well as print and digital journalism, in Pakistan and the United States. In the United States, his investigations into America's nuclear legacy and climate-related health epidemics have won over a dozen regional and national awards, contributed to the introduction of new federal legislation, and the declassification of historical records. Presently, he is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communications at Columbia University.
Receiving the "Emerging Scholar Award" provided a valuable opportunity to enhance my knowledge by engaging in in-depth scientific discussions and sharing research experiences with distinguished academics and experts at a leading international media and communication conference."
This award not only allowed me to showcase my research as a featured presenter but also provided me with the invaluable opportunity to co-moderate themed sessions. This position uniquely enabled me to facilitate meaningful discussions and connections within the academic community. I am grateful for the platform this award has provided to share my work and engage with fellow scholars in the field."
As an Emerging Scholar I got a behind-the-scenes peek at the conference and got to reflect deeply on innovative conference session formats. I bonded with an amazing group of scholars who shared their own insights, tips, and scholarship. The conference has inspired and encouraged my own research in so many ways!