Dima El Sayed

Dima El Sayed is the Information and Protection Officer at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Lebanon where she provides Syrian refugees with information and legal support to surviving displacement. While studying law in Beirut, Dima became a founding member of the Students Struggle Organisation and wrote, directed and acted in a theater piece that predicted the assassination of her mentor, Samir Kassir. Dima received an LLM in Comparative Legal studies from La Sorbonne University and wrote her short story « Pourquoi voyagent les voyageurs » (“Why do Travelers Travel”) during the suicide bombings in London. She enrolled in a PhD program at La Sorbonne, with articles published around a comparative approach between the Western and Arab worlds to denounce the myth of a civilizations clash. Dima became the International Affairs coordinator of the General Union of Arab Students in Europe, worked as a consultant to a peace program that supported Palestinian students and later became the Legal and Policy consultant at UNESCO Staff Union. Dima then decided to pursue her musical and poetic studies through the sacred art of singing Dhrupad in India. There she finished her first collection of poems, written in three languages and telling of the many possible seasons of the Arab Spring.