Safaa Khalaf
Safaa Khalaf is an Iraqi award-winning journalist, political analyst, researcher, and poet. Khalaf holds a bachelor’s degree in historical studies from the University of Basra, and completed studies in social sciences from Beirut, as well as various training courses in investigative journalism. As a reporter and editor, Khalaf has held positions with several Iraqi, pan-Arabic and international media outlets. In 2013, he established with other journalists the first Iraqi website for investigative journalism, al aalem aljaded. In April 2015, he also re-established the official Iraqi News Agency after it was shut down in 2003 due to the American invasion. He is a leading co-investigator in the research project “A Locality in Crisis: A study of the local governance crisis and public protests in Basra” at the London School of Economics. (Links to read more about the research project in Arabic and English at the bottom of the page.) His articles have been translated into several languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, and Farsi. A prolific writer, he published the book Iraq after ISIS: Crises of Over-Optimism in 2019. He also published a collection of poetry (The Blonde Negro) and has had his poetry selected for several anthologies including Water Forest - Poets of Basra in 100 years, Rhythm of the South: The Poetical Scene in Basra (2016), The South Invents the Rain, and Surviving Dreams (2018), Tattoos of the Seagull (2019), and EKSIL: Arab-Danish anthology (2019). In 2017, he was awarded the Naseej Prize by the French Agency for International Cooperation that recognizes writers focused on issues surrounding cultural and religious diversity in the Middle East. His current work focus is on issues of water crises in Iraq and the Middle East, in addition to social variables and their relationship to corruption. He was welcomed as an ICORN writer in residence by the city of Stavanger in 2020.
To learn more of his work, you can follow him on Twitter at @safaakhalaf1 and visit his website safaakhalaf.com.
For further reading:
Research project “A Locality in Crisis: A study of the local governance crisis and public protests in Basra” - Arabic- http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/110478/3/BasraLocalityinCrisisArabic.pdf - English- http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/110478/2/Al_Jaffal_basra_locality_in_crisis_pub...
Iraq After Isis: Crisis of Over-Optimism - https://archive.org/details/iraq-after-isis-safaa-khalaf/mode/2up
Writer details
Country: