Associate Professor Behrouz Boochani graduated from Tarbiat Moallem
University and Tarbiat Modares University, both in Tehran; he holds
a Masters degree in political science, political geography and
geopolitics. He is a Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, scholar,
cultural advocate and filmmaker. From 2013 to 2017 he was a
political prisoner incarcerated by the Australian government in the
Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (Papua New Guinea). Since
being forcibly transferred in 2017 he continued to be incarcerated
in one of three new prisons (East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre).
Boochani was writer for the Kurdish language magazine Werya; is
Adjunct Associate Professor in Social Sciences at UNSW;
non-resident Visiting Scholar at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration
Centre (SAPMiC), University of Sydney; Honorary Member of PEN
International; and winner of an Amnesty International Australia
2017 Media Award, the Diaspora Symposium Social Justice Award, the
Liberty Victoria 2018 Empty Chair Award, and the Anna Politkovskaya
award for journalism. He publishes regularly with The Guardian, and
his writing also features in The Saturday Paper, Huffington Post,
New Matilda, The Financial Times and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Boochani is also co-director (with Arash Kamali Sarvestani) of the
2017 feature-length film Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time;
collaborator on Nazanin Sahamizadeh's play Manus; associate
producer for Hoda Afshar's video installation Remain (2018) and the
accompanying photography portrait series; and author of No Friend
but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison (Picador 2018). At the
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2019 his book won the Victorian
Prize for Literature in addition to the Non-Fiction category. He
has also won the Special Award at the 2019 NSW Premier's Literary
Awards; Non-Fiction Book of the Year, Australian Book Industry
Awards; and the National Biography Prize.
Dr Omid Tofighian is an award-winning lecturer, researcher and
community advocate, combining philosophy with interests in citizen
media, popular culture, displacement and discrimination. He
completed his PhD in philosophy at Leiden University, Netherlands,
and graduated with a combined honours degree in philosophy and
studies in religion at the University of Sydney. Tofighian has
lived variously in Australia where he taught at different
universities; the United Arab Emirates where he taught at Abu Dhabi
University; Belgium where he was a visiting scholar at K.U. Leuven;
Netherlands for his PhD; and intermittent periods in Iran for
research. His current roles include Assistant Professor of English
and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo; Adjunct
Lecturer in the School of the Arts and Media, UNSW; Honorary
Research Associate for the Department of Philosophy, University of
Sydney; faculty at Iran Academia; and campaign manager for Why Is
My Curriculum White? - Australasia. He contributes to community
arts and cultural projects and works with refugees, migrants and
youth. He has published numerous book chapters and journal
articles, is author of Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues
(Palgrave 2016), translator of Behrouz Boochani's multi-award
winning book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison
(Picador 2018), and co-editor of 'Refugee Filmmaking', Alphaville:
Journal of Film and Screen Media (Winter 2019).
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