In our series to mark World Refugee Day, Al-Fanar Media has interviewed Rahaf Aldoughli, a Syrian academic in Britain whose televised views on the Syrian regime’s policies have seen her banned from her home country.
Aldoughli is currently working as a lecturer in Middle Eastern and North African studies at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.
In her studies she seeks a rational reading of the war that has torn Syria apart since 2011 and to deal realistically with the new life for her and millions of Syrians in countries of asylum.
Aldoughli, who moved to Britain in 2011 when the conflict erupted, thinks that rationality means “employing emotion to produce research that refutes the stereotypes on Syria, which view Syrians as divided sectarian or religious groups.”
Her difficulties started three months after arriving in Britain, when the Syrian government cut the financial scholarship for her postgraduate studies and the Syrian embassy in London shut its doors.
Aldloughli faced that crisis in 2012 by getting a scholarship from Lancaster University to continue her studies. She then obtained a research fellowship from the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame, in the United States, which enabled her to conduct research on peace and justice in Syria.