REGISTER: via email to Olga Dunaevsky, odunaevs@uci.edu

moderated by Sherine Hamdy & Soha Bayoumi

Dr. Aida Seif El-Dawla has an impressive record as a professor of psychiatry and human rights activist. She is a founding member of the New Woman Foundation, the Association for Health and Environmental Development, and most importantly, of El Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, which has been a crucial player in the documentation of state violence and torture, and one of the only places where trauma patients—whether citizens, migrants, or refugees—could seek counsel and relief since 1993. For this, Dr. Seif El-Dawla received in 2003 Human Rights Watch’s highest honor. After playing a pivotal role in the popular uprisings that began in 2011 and onward, Dr. Seif El-Dawla’s center was ordered to be shut down by the current regime of president Abdelfattah el-Sisi. Dr. Seif El-Dawla faced constant threats and accusations by the regime and yet continued to practice and mentor new generations of psychiatrists and mental health practitioners to document and rehabilitate victims of (often state) torture, in the process, publishing numerous papers, reports, articles, blogs, and pamphlets on their work, including Torture: A State Policy (Zed: 2009).