introducing myself

Hi, my name is Lokman. I'm a fourth year graduate student at the Annenberg School of Penn. Born and raised in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, I came to the States for my graduate studies. My parents are from Hong Kong. I got my MA degree in China Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where I wrote my thesis on the topic of internet censorship and regulation in China. I got interested in technology, internet, new media and communication and ended up at Annenberg, where I am currently busy working on my dissertation proposal that will look at the impact citizen journalism has for global news production.

I will do some traveling in the summer, going to Hong Kong and Budapest. I'm really excited to visit these places and meet people. In Hong Kong, I will be participating in the 6th annual Chinese Internet Research conference hosted at Hong Kong University. In Budapest, I'm going to a conference that focuses on the tensions new technologies create between the global and the local. Following that, I will be attending the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit. I am excited to meet everybody from Global Voices, who are an amazing group of people trying to bring attention to what is happening to those parts in the world that the mainstream media are ignoring. After coming back to Philadelphia, I will be busy revising and finishing my proposal, so that I will be ready to defend it by the end of August, or early September.

I'm a bit of a veteran and have a personal, a scholarly blog and I also contribute to a group blog. Look forward to getting to know all of you!