Dina Matar

Dina Matar (born March 1955) is a professor of political communication and Arab media, with a focus on Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and chair of SOAS University of London's Centre for Global Media and Communication. Prior to academia, Matar was a news correspondent, editor, and analyst.

Education and personal life Matar grew up in Dheisheh refugee camp. Her father Henry Matar (1916–1933) was a professor. Matar did her undergraduate Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Chemistry at the University of Jordan. In 1988, she moved to a suburb of London with her English husband John Taysom, whom she met in Bahrain, and their son. She went on to complete a Master of Science (MSc) in Comparative Politics in 1999 and a PhD in Media and Communication in 2005, both from the London School of Economics (LSE). Matar published her first book and monograph What it Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood in 2010, in which she collected interviews with Palestinians across the Levant on their personal and family stories contextualised with broader history. She reunited with Khatib to co-author The Hizbullah Phenomenon (2014) with her and Alef Alshaer. She edited the volumes Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (2013) with Zahera Harb and Gaza as Metaphor (2016) with Helga Tawil-Souri.

From 2018 to 2024, Matar chaired the Centre for Palestine Studies. From 2020 to 2022, she headed School of Interdisciplinary Studies.

In October 2023, Matar was one of those over 800 scholars to warn of a potential genocide in Gaza. Matar reunited with Tawil-Souri to edit the collection Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine through Contemporary Media.