For nearly a decade, IIE-SRF has been supporting Iraqi scholars to contribute to the rebuilding of Iraqi higher education through distance learning and bridging activities. These efforts began during the IIE Iraq Scholar Rescue Project, which, amidst a devastating higher education emergency in Iraq, supported more than 280 professors and researchers to safely resume their work. When the ISRP ended, IIE-SRF established the Iraq Distance Learning Initiative (DLI), which since 2015 has strengthened connections between Iraqi scholars in the diaspora and university students, professors, and institutions of higher education inside Iraq through the remote delivery of live lectures and courses.
In this video, recorded as part of the TWAS Science in Exile series webinar “Return of scientific personnel and reconstruction of infrastructure,” IIE-SRF’s Special Advisor Celine Taminian discusses the components of the DLI, including the Live Lectures Project and the Joint Courses Project, and explains how the initiative benefits Iraq-based participants and institutions, as well as IIE-SRF scholars.
