Professor Saba Bebawi is Dean of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. Prior to that, she held the position of Head of the Journalism and Writing discipline in the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Bebawi is Chair for the Global Communication and Social Change (CCSC) division at the International Communication Association (ICA). She is also Unit Editor for Culture, Art and Knowledge Work for 'AI in Society' Oxford Intersections with Oxford University Press. Bebawi is co-editor for the book series ‘Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South’. She is also a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts.

Bebawi has published on the role of digital journalism within social, cultural, and economic frameworks of news-making, particularly in relation to democracy building and the Global South. Her areas of research expertise have spanned from citizen and community media policy and funding models, data journalism, alternative representations in global news, social media in conflict reporting, and investigative journalism. Accordingly, her key contributions have been centered on developing innovative conceptual and theoretical frameworks to industry and scholars for understanding how representative perspectives and voices can be included and incorporated in journalistic practice and training, with a focus on digital journalism research and computational research methods.

Bebawi is author of ‘Media Power and Global Television News: The role of Al Jazeera English’ (2016); ‘Investigative Journalism in the Arab World: Issues and Challenges’ (2016); and co-author of ‘The Future Foreign Correspondent’ (2019); in addition to co-editor of ‘Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The 'Arab Spring'’ (2014), ‘Data Journalism in the Global South’ (2020); ‘Different Global Journalisms: Cultures and Contexts’ (2023); 'The Routledge Companion to Journalism and the Global South' (2023), and 'Hybrid Investigative Journalism' (2025).

Bebawi was a Scholarly Fellow at the Centre for Media Pluralism and Freedom at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy (June-July 2017); Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) (July 2016); Digital Journalism Research Fellow at OsloMet in Norway (March 2020); and an Erasmus Mundus Scholarly Fellow at Charles University in Prague and the University of Amsterdam (March 2023).

Bebawi is an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow (2018-2020), and was also Chief Investigator of an ARC Discovery Project (2018-2020) on a project titled ‘Media Pluralism and Online News’. Bebawi is founder and project director of the ‘Foreign Correspondent Study Tour (FCST)’, funded by the Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Bebawi was one of the leading women in research as part of the SAGE Athena SWAN pilot.

Bebawi has worked as a journalist since 1995. She was a broadcaster/producer for Radio Jordan English service for four years, and also worked on a contract basis for CNN, World New Events (USA), and Dubai TV. She is a media development and policy consultant, in addition to being a media trainer. She has previously held academic positions at Monash University and Swinburne University in Australia, in addition to Zayed University in the UAE.

Bebawi holds a PhD in Global Media and Policy from the University of Melbourne, an MA research in Media Policy from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and an MA in Communications from Monash University in Australia. She also holds a BA in Musicology (Performance). Bebawi has completed the Oxford Artificial Intelligence certificate from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; and also a Management Essentials certificate at Harvard Business School.