Saba Vasefi
Dr. Saba Vasefi is a multi-award-winning scholar-journalist, poet, and documentary filmmaker. She is an Honorary Postdoctoral Associate at Macquarie University, an academic at the University of Sydney, Sydney Peace Foundation council member and the Red Room Poetry’s Writing in Resistance editor.
Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Transnational Literature, Wasafiri Magazine of International Contemporary Writing (UK), Cordite Poetry, Australian Poetry, International peer-reviewed journal Axon, and The best Australian poems 2022 and the Art Gallery of NSW. She is the editor of Borderless, A Transnational Anthology of Feminist Poetry.
Her report on the gendered harms of detention won the Premier's Multicultural Communications Awards. To date, her works on human rights issues have been published in leading Australian and international newspapers including BBC, ABC, Associated Press, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, SBS, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Women’s Weekly Magazine, news.com, BuzzFeed, Daily Life, The Canberra Times, and Women’s Agenda.
She was twice a judge for the Dolatabadi Book Prize for the Best Book on Women's Literature and Women's Issues, a judge for the BR4R Seeking Asylum Poetry Prize and Diversity and Inclusion Award for the ACRAs.
Saba is a member of The Women in Refugee Law Network in the UK, an honorary advisor for the Indigo Foundation and an honorary member of the Independent Scholars Association of Australia Inc.
Saba has completed her postgraduate degree in documentary filmmaking from the Australian Film Television and Radio school. Her documentary films have been screened by the BBC, the UN, Amnesty International, Copenhagen Film Festival, the Seen and Heard Film Festival, the Human Rights Film Festival, the Exile Films Festival, and at UCLA among many other special screenings around the world. She was a member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters and also worked as a researcher for the International Campaign for Human Rights based in New York.
Vasefi, an expert on gendered state violence has appeared at numerous events such as The Opera House's All About Women conference and ABC Q & A. She has also been invited by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to provide insights and testimony for their inquiry into the human rights implications of recent violence in Iran.