Invisible Men: The Injured Lives of Afghan Interpreters

Please see below the speakers bios: 

Professor Sara de Jong has researched the claims to protection and rights by Afghan interpreters and their advocates in countries involved in the Afghanistan war (2001-2021) for the past six years. Her research traces continuities between colonial and neo-imperial ab/uses of local brokers, such as interpreters, who are often indispensable but treated as expendable. It centres Afghan voices, interrogates and informs resettlement policies and connects advocates internationally. Together with three Afghanistan veterans, she also co-founded the Sulha Alliance, which advocates for Afghan interpreters and other locally employed civilians employed by the British Army. She collaborated with photographer Andy Barnham to create the award-winning exhibition 'We are here, because you were there: Afghan interpreters in the UK', soon again on display in Impressions Gallery in Bradford. 

Sayed Jalal Shajjan is a writer and a graduate of social and cultural anthropology with degrees from the University of Tuebingen in Germany and London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also a prize-winning journalist whose work has covered conflict, security, migration and humanitarian crisis. His work has been published in Aljazeera, the Vice, the New Arab and many more. Sayed Jalal, coming from Afghanistan, previously worked with the government of Afghanistan and international organisations focusing on post-conflict sustainable development and disaster risk management. His interests include, violence, post-conflict development, migration, and governance.  In 2017 and 2018, Sayed Jalal conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Kabul, focusing on the lives of local interpreters as they lived in hiding from the insurgents. 

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