Overview

It is in our core mission to support Qatar’s society to prosper and strengthen its cultural roots and identity. As the world continues to change at an accelerating rate, social progress is increasingly essential to protect our heritage, culture, community, and the future of our children.

Our research focus in social progress cuts across five key areas:

  • Arabic Language, Culture and Heritage
  • Social Responsibility
  • Social Inclusion
  • Ethics and Policy
  • Family Cohesion

Cycle 1 of the Flagship Research Grant Program brings together expertise and knowledge from four HBKU colleges: College of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Public Policy, College of Law and College of Islamic Studies. HBKU collaborates with many local and international institutes and organizations to tackle pressing issues that cut across priority areas under social progress.

FRG Cluster 1

Managing Social Transformation in Qatar: Risks, Trends and Future Trajectories

The aim is to produce strategic insights that contribute to an understanding of the forces and trends shaping the future trajectories of Qatari society across socio-cultural and socio-economic domains.

The FRG Cluster 1 will examine four key strategic areas:

  • Higher Education: Participation, skills and training, quality, and international competitiveness
  • Public Health & Technology: Capacity, service delivery, gaps, and inefficiencies
  • Culture and transformation: Identity, language, and cultural ‘stresses’
  • Social welfare and protection: Social inclusion, elderly, housing, disability

Major outputs include the identification of:

  • Sectoral trends, highlighting emerging key threats and potential fissure points
  • Policy pathways, strategic choices, and decision points
  • Potential ‘shocks’ and impact assessment
  • Legal and governance gaps, including regulatory and policy gaps
Managing Social Transformation in Qatar: Risks, Trends and Future Trajectories
PDF 126.88 kB
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Team members

FRG Cluster 2

Explorations in Developing an HBKU Index of Social Cohesion

The International Social Cohesiveness Index falls short of accounting for different contexts and variables. This research cluster, therefore, aims at developing an HBKU Index of an interdisciplinary construct that can fill in the gaps and provide an index of this multifaceted construct that could be used in Qatar and the region.

The FRG Cluster 2 covers three domains:

  • The economic domain: Exclusion, equality, and inequality
  • The political domain: Legitimacy/illegitimacy via trust in institutions, participation/passivity via social capital or political participation
  • The sociocultural domain: Acceptance/rejection via solidarity as well as affiliation/isolate via socio cultural participation

Major outputs would include

  • Review paper on social cohesion: An Islamic perspective
  • Social Media Dataset annotated for misinformation, polarization, and propaganda
  • HBKU-Social Cohesion Index Report
Explorations in Developing an HBKU Index of Social Cohesion
PDF 145.39 kB
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Team members