Shaden Sabouni is a social and cultural anthropologist and lecturer at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Hochschule Koblenz and Fulda University of Applied Sciences. She completed her PhD in Social and Cultural Sciences with a dissertation on Syrian refugee families in Germany, focusing particularly on gendered relations and changing family dynamics after forced migration. Shaden arrived in Germany with her family in 2017, determined to rebuild her social and professional life after she was displaced from Syria. Despite the challenges of starting over in a new cultural context, she is committed to proving that refugees are capable of building, contributing to and achieving a better future when given the opportunity. This commitment led her to return to higher education at the age of 40, where she obtained a Master’s degree in Intercultural Communication and European Studies. 

Her decision to return to university was not only personal. It was also to challenge the stereotypes and categorisations often associated with refugees. Shaden has worked with several organisations that support refugee integration into German society and is currently a freelance cultural trainer for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), specialising in the Middle East, and a fellow at bicc.