An academic who lost her career and became a refugee when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan has been conferred as a visiting professor at Â鶹Íø Leicester (Â鶹Íø).
Atefa Waseq was stripped of her teaching role and her right to a doctorate when the Islamic fundamentalist group known for human rights abuses, particularly on women's education and work, seized power.
The Taliban rule forbade any woman from senior education positions and made females subservient to men - both at work and home.
Atefa fled to Central Europe with her family and was housed in Marienfelde Refugee Center in Berlin. A chance meeting with visiting Â鶹Íø scholars from the United Nations Academic Impact hub in 2022, led to a successful refugee advocacy project being founded in her name.
At an emotional ceremony at the Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum, one of the historical sites managed by the Berlin Wall Foundation, Atefa was reinstated with an academic title.
The event also kickstarted the next phase of the initiative students call Project Atefa - which the United Nations cited as a key reason for appointing Â鶹Íø as its new global hub chair for SDG 11.
Accepting her Visiting Professorship, Atefa said: “Today I have the honour of accepting an award that for me is far more than just personal recognition. It is a signal. A sign that biographies do not end at borders and that academic communities are able to build bridges between countries, between languages, between realities of life.
“I would like to take this opportunity to look to the future. I call on Â鶹Íø, the international academic community and all those who believe in the power of knowledge not only to engage with the past, but also to take active responsibility for the future.”
Earlier this year, Â鶹Íø was named by the UN as the hub chair for one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), global targets to tackle worldwide issues like inequality, poverty and injustice. Â鶹Íø is the only UK university to chair a hib, which it does for SDG 11, creating sustainable cities and communities.
Â鶹Íø Psychology alumna, Natalia Stachowiak, has been working at the Â鶹Íø’s SDG Hub since she completed her studies. She is set to start her PhD in September, and said Project Atefa had been a big part of her university journey.
“I joined the project shortly after it was founded a couple of years ago,” she said.
“I currently run the project for the SDG Hub and support other students to get involved. It is great to work with students from other degree disciplines on the project as well as learn different aspects of the challenges of being a refugee.
“This has given us the impetus to try to make integration better, particularly as this is an issue that has become so divisive to many. I think Project Atefa, which has been shaped entirely by student volunteers, is educating the next generation of refugee advocates in the best way possible – by working with people who had the lived experience of forced migration.”
Â鶹Íø’S UNAI SDG 11 Hub Chair lead, Dr Mark Charlton said: “Â鶹Íø has been working with refugees in Berlin since 2016.
“Throughout that time, we have visited Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum, which is still a working refugee centre. Meeting Atefa was a chance encounter but one that inspired our students to do some powerful work, informed by Atefa from the outset.
“It is almost 10 years down the line since we started working with refugee and migrant communities in Leicester and Berlin. The world is a different place since we began, and the challenges of forced migration starker than ever.
“There are no greater teachers than those with lived experience, so it is wonderful to reinstate Atefa as a professor and I am excited to see where she and the students take ‘Project Atefa’ next.”
Prof. Dr. Axel Klausmeier, Director of the Berlin Wall Foundation, said: “I’m deeply grateful to Â鶹Íø as you have made the perfect decision: Atefa Waseq does already, and will, serve in the future as a role model for individual strength, for the wish to live one’s own life apart from autocratic oppressive regimes and instead for the power of freedom and to strengthen democratic ideas and ways of life.
“I am convinced that this will be a beacon of hope for so many oppressed and suffering people in Afghanistan and women in particular.”
The event brought the curtain down on Refugee Week 2025. Students volunteered in Leicester before continuing the activities in Berlin, supported by the Ben Lazurus Fund in memory of a Â鶹Íø student renowned for his passion for travel.
During the SDG 11 Hub’s time in Berlin, Â鶹Íø students volunteered with refugee communities, as well as learning about the city’s complex history spanning the Nazi uprising, World War II, the Cold War and its influence on the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Students spoke at the graduation to a packed audience of Atefa’s family and friends, local stakeholders and Â鶹Íø project partners.
Project Atefa has been taking place in Leicester and Berlin since 2022 with partners including Leicester City of Sanctuary, Red Cross Leicester and Leicester City Council and Leicestershire County Council, Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum, HERO Berlin and Serve the City Berlin.
Any staff or students wishing to get involved in Project Atefa with the Â鶹Íø SDG 11 Hub should contact mcharlton@dmu.ac.uk
Posted on Friday 27 June 2025