Dr Nazand Begikhani is a contemporary Kurdish writer, poet and leading academic researcher into gender based violence, and an active advocate of human rights. She is an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, Centre for Gender and Violence Research and has been awarded the Vincent Wright Chair and works as a visiting professor at Sciences Po School for International Affairs, Paris.

Begikhani has been living in Europe (Denmark, France and United Kingdom) since 1987. She received her M.A and Ph.D in comparative literature from the university of the Sorbonne, Paris, and published nine books, including six poetry collections, in English, Kurdish and French.

Nazand Begikhani is a leading researcher on gender-based violence and has conducted research on many aspects of violence and gender relations, including honour-based violence (HBV), rape and sexual violence in Iraq and Syria, domestic violence, and family policy and practice in Kurdistan.

Nazand has been awarded several international awards, including the UK Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize for her work on HBV (2000), Kurdistan Region's Sayd Ibrahim's Memorial Prize for her creativity (2009) and the French Simone Landrey's Feminine Poetry Prize for her poetry work (2012). Her poetry was also nominated for the Forward Book of Poetry Prize; one of her poems, An Ordinary Day was elected by Forward Poetry Prizes as one of the best 40 poems of the year in the UK (2007).