Dr. Nazand Begikhani has been awarded the prestigious Vincent Wright Chair at the School of International Affairs at the Paris Institute of Political Sciences (Sciences Po) in 2020.

Inaugurated in 2003, the Vincent Wright Chair is a visiting professorship that promotes academic exchanges between France and Britain by welcoming a senior academic member from the UK to Sciences Po each year. The Chair encourages European comparative research and helps develop cooperation between Sciences Po and British universities.

The award will facilitate and support the development of research networks and activities with key social science research centres at Sciences Po.

Dr Nazand Begikhani will contribute to the activities of PRESAGE, the Research and Educational Programs on Gender Studies. She will be working on a program on Gender-based Violence and Displacement, focusing on the Middle East and Middle Eastern diaspora. The programme will also include teaching a course on creative writing entitled ‘Exploring Human Experiences Through Poetry’. Sciences Po is a highly selective French university (Grande École) in the social sciences, internationally recognised for the quality of its academic output.

Dr. Begikhani (M.A. & PhD, Sorbonne University), Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, is also an honorary member of the Centre for Gender and Violence Research and Regional Editor (Middle East) of the Journal of Gender-Based Violence.

Dr. Begikhani has conducted research on many aspects of violence and gender relations, including honour-based violence and honour killings in the UK and in Iraq, women and war, rape and sexual violence during conflict, focusing on Iraq and Syria. She recently finished, with Dr Emma Williamson (PI) and Nadia Aghtai, a two-year research project on gender-based violence and displacement in UK and Iraqi Kurdistan Region, which was funded by ESRC. She has worked as an expert advisor with a range of national and international organizations and government departments, including the United Nation’s Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI), UN Women, the UK Metropolitan Police, the Swedish Ministry of Integration and Amnesty International. She has addressed social policy in post-conflict Iraq and initiated the establishment of gender studies centre at Kurdistan Universities. She is currently advising Kurdistan Region’s President on Higher Education and Gender embedding gender across curriculum in Kurdistan Region.

In addition, Dr. Begikhani is the principal editor/publisher of a Specialised Imprint (Collection) at the l'Harmattan, called Peuples cultures et littératures de l'Orient.

Nazand is also an internationally known poet, who won several poetry prizes, including France’s Simone Landrey’s Feminine Poetry Prize in 2012.