University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh has been shortlisted for the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) Awards Asia 2023 in the category of ”Outstanding Contribution to Regional Development" for its project FactWatch.

ULAB is the only Bangladeshi university this year to be shortlisted for the THE Awards Asia.  Of the 700 applications from all over Asia, only 80 entries have been shortlisted under 10 categories.

FactWatch is a signature project of ULAB run by the Center for Critical and Qualitative Studies (CQS) that works for promoting Media Information Literacy (MIL) and raising awareness about misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and rumors in Bangladesh. ULAB Professor and Director of CQS Dr. Sumon Rahman is the Founding Editor of this project.

FactWatch was established in 2017 with an initial funding from the American Center. The project garnered global recognition in 2020 as it became a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) as the first fact-checking organization of Bangladesh. In the following year of 2021, FactWatch became the only Bangladeshi organization to enter into a partnership with Facebook as a Third-Party Fact-Checker.

The final ceremony of THE Awards Asia 2023 will take place at the Asia Universities Summit in Hong Kong in June 2023.

BDST: 1848 HRS, APRIL 03, 2023
MSK