Timothy Loh, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Anthropology, recently won the 2024 Suad Joseph Student Paper Award, with his paper titled, “An Expanded Istifada: Cochlear Implants and Regulating Communication for Deaf Jordanians”.  

In this beautiful ethnographic piece, Loh argues for a multiplicity of ideological approaches to a language within a society and explains how different approaches in using language are deeply embedded in various therapeutic practices. 

He combines a sensitively conducted and richly detailed ethnographic research on the speech-centric ethos in therapeutic attitudes towards cochlear-implanted children in Jordan with multidisciplinary theoretical framework, including, but not limited to, semiotic anthropology, linguistics, and medical anthropology. 

Through his paper, he provides an original contribution not only to anthropology, but also to disability studies, science and technology studies, and globalization studies. The paper is beautifully written, conceptually sophisticated, thoughtfully argued, and makes an outstanding contribution to the anthropology of the Middle East and beyond.