The Plight of the Afghan Refugees, Adele Barker, professor emerita of Russian studies at the University of Arizona

About Our Speaker: Adele Barker, a native of Washington, D.C, is professor emerita of Russian Studies at the University of Arizona. She is a literary scholar and has been the recipient of two Fulbright grants, one to Sri Lanka in 2001-2002, and the other to Pakistan in 2014, where she taught at Pakistan’s first all-women university. She returned to teach for three more years, during which time her life brought her into contact with the Afghan refugees living in and around Rawalpindi. Back in the United States, she has continued that engagement with the recent arrivals from Afghanistan. In addition to her academic writing, Adele is the author of “Not Quite Paradise: An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka” (Beacon Press, 2020) about her time in Sri Lanka against the background of the civil war and the tsunami. Her passions are photography, travel, good books, and improving her creative writing skills.