Saad Eskander ( ar, سعد اسکندر; born 1962) is a contemporary

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

academic and researcher. He was born in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

, joined the Kurdish

Peshmerga The Peshmerga ( ku, پێشمەرگه, Pêşmerge, lit=those who face death) is the Kurdish military forces of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq. According to the Constitution of Iraq, the Peshmerga, along with their security subsidiaries, ...

in 1981 and lived in the mountains of

Iraqi Kurdistan Iraqi Kurdistan or Southern Kurdistan ( ku, باشووری کوردستان, Başûrê Kurdistanê) refers to the Kurdish-populated part of northern Iraq. It is considered one of the four parts of "Kurdistan" in Western Asia, which also inc ...

for four years, then moved to

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

and Syria. He received his

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in modern history from the

University of North London The University of North London (UNL) was a university in London, England, formed from the Polytechnic of North London (PNL) in 1992 when that institution was granted university status. PNL, in turn, had been formed by the amalgamation of the No ...

and his PhD in international relations and history from the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

. His thesis was title
Britain's policy towards the Kurdish question, 1915-1923.
He returned to

in 2003 after the

invasion An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity aggressively enter territory (country subdivision), territory owned by another such entity, gen ...

and since then has served as the director of the Iraq National Library and Archive. During the height of civil war in Iraq, he wrote a

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

diary about the harrowing experience of living in Baghdad, which was subsequently published on the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

's website. The diary was written between November 2006 and July 2007.

Awards and honours

He was awarded ''Archivist of the Year Award'' by New York's Scone Foundation at a ceremony at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in New York on 12 November 2007. He also won the ''MESA Academic Freedom Award'' of the Middle East Studies Association in 2007. He was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in recognition of his distinguished service at a ceremony hosted at the British Library in December 2008.British Library Website: http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary/cilip.html In 2010, Dr. Eskander was elected as Iraq's representative at the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for promoting the Return of Cultural Property to the Country of their Origins.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eskander, Saad 1962 births Living people Iraqi Kurdish people People from Baghdad Iraqi librarians Kurdish scholars Kurdish historians 20th-century Kurdish people 21st-century Kurdish people