Choman Hardi
Expertise
Sexual Violence in ConflictSocial Movements & Non-violent Resistance
Women Human Rights Defenders
Women's Rights
Details
Media
Whispering Walls and the Inherited Complexities of Kurdish Life (Review) Arab Digest Sep 19, 2023
Exploring War, Women’s Rights, and the Power of Poetry with Choman Hardi What the World Will Become Podcast Episode 7 Aug 17, 2023
The backlash against women’s rights in Iraq’s Kurdistan region Chatham House Apr 14, 2023
Women’s Resistance: On the Page and on the Ground Video The Josef Korbel School of International Studies Mar 14, 2023
Letter from Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan Feminist Perspectives Oct 11, 2022
Gendered Higher Education in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan Manara Magazine May 25, 2022
Gender Studies Center in Iraqi Kurdistan Challenges Traditional Ideas Al-Fanar Media Mar 22, 2021
Despite female parliament speaker, experts say political equality still an issue in Kurdistan Region Kurdistan24 Mar 3, 2019
Choman Hardi – Considering the Women Radio New Zealand
The Kurdish referendum: Dream of independence and fear of dictatorship Opinion Middle East Eye Sept 26, 2017
The Arts Hour BBC World Service July 1, 2017
Mantua Literature Festival Intervista a Choman Hardi You Tube Sept 8, 2017
Choman Hardi (@chomahardi) is an educator, poet, and scholar known for pioneering work on issues of gender and education in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and beyond. After 26 years of exile, she returned home in 2014 to teach English and initiate gender studies at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS), where she also served as English department chair in 2015-16. Her novel Whispering Walls was published in 2023.
She founded the Center for Gender and Development Studies CGDS at AUIS in 2015, developed and taught feminist courses, built a team, fundraised, and conducted and published research. Choman was the driving force behind initiating the first interdisciplinary gender studies minor in Iraq in 2017. She was also keen to make gender studies resources available in Kurdish and Arabic, and secured funding from the European Union for it. In 2019, she received support from the UK Global Challenges Research Fund for a research project about masculinity and violence, in partnership with London School of Economics.
Choman is the author of critically acclaimed books in the fields of poetry, academia, and translation. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, her post-doctoral research, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq (Routledge, 2011) was named a UK Core Title by the Yankee Book Peddler. Since 2010, poems from her first English collection, Life for Us (Bloodaxe, 2004) have been studied by secondary school students as part of their general curriculum in the UK (AQA and Edexel). Her second collection, Considering the Women (Bloodaxe, 2015), was given a recommendation by the Poetry Book Society and shortlisted for the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection. In 2017, a selection of her poems was published in Italian. In 2020, Considering the Woman was released in a French translation.
A former chairperson of Exiled Writers Ink!, Choman has facilitated creative writing workshops for the School of Oriental and African Studies, The Arvon Foundation, Spread the Word, Shetland Arts, Academi Wales, Southbank Centre, Apples and Snakes, and the British Council. She was Poet-In-Residence at Moniack Mhor Writers Centre in Scotland, Villa Hellebosch in Belgium, Hedgebrook Women Writers’ Retreat in the USA, and The Booth in Shetland.