Mariam Hassoun

Mariam Hassoun is an MSc in Education (Comparative and International Education) candidate at the University of Oxford. Her dissertation project is titled: Barriers to and Opportunities for Schooling for Internally Displaced Persons in Iraq. She is interested in how education can be used to reconstruct systems, countries, and persons impacted by conflict and education as a human right in emergencies, in the Middle East generally but specifically in Iraq. Although born in Auckland, New Zealand to two Iraqi parents, she calls New York City and Huntsville, Alabama home. Mariam is a magna cum laude graduate of Emory University with B.A. degrees in Political Science and Interdisciplinary Studies. Mariam researched English language education policy and ethical global development for her senior honors thesis. She founded Baraka English School in 2017, which provides education to orphans of the Iraq-Daesh war in Baghdad. In the past 5 years, she has fundraised over $20,000 to fund her educational work with Baraka. She is the director of the Global Resilience Stories Project, which collects and shares stories of resilience from the COVID-19 pandemic. With her friends and family, she loves making Spotify playlists, visiting art museums, and traveling.

Updated June 2021