Haleh Afshar

Baroness Afshar was raised to the peerage as Baroness Afshar, of Heslington in the County of North Yorkshire in 2007. She is a crossbencher.

Baroness Haleh Ashfar is a prominent Muslim feminist born in Iraq in 1944, where she grew up with a privileged family. In the late 1940’s she and her family moved to France, and later back to England where she attended a boarding school in Solihull.

In the past she has served as the Chair for the British Association of Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of United Nation Association's International Services. For seven years she served as Deputy Chair of the British Council's Gender and Development Task Force and she has also served with the Advisory Group of the Cabinet Offices Women's Unit to work on raising gender awareness amongst civil servants who adjudicate on applications for asylum from women.

She served as a member of Nuffield Council on a working group on bioethics and pharmacogenetics. In 2008 she was appointed to serve as a Commissioner on Women’s National Commission.

She is currently Professor Emeritus of Politics and women’s studies at the University of York, and has previously been awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities.
 

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