Media Strategist, Rural Politics Expert, Poet

Sayed Asef Hossaini was born in 1980 in Balkh, Afghanistan. He was one year old when his family immigrated to Iran with thousands of refugees due to USSR invasion. He completed his primary and secondary education there. After the fall of the Taliban, Asef went to Afghanistan for the first time at age 22 and entered Kabul University and studied Philosophy and Sociology.

Along with the studies, he participated in political activities and worked as the editor and the chief-in-editor of the only opposition weekly Sadaye Mardom (Voice of the People). In 2005, as a student at Kabul University, Asef ran for a seat in the first Afghan parliament, and meanwhile was a leader of the Afghanistan Student Movement, frequently speaking out for security and against the resurgent Taliban.

In 2008, Asef won a DAAD scholarship to complete his master in Public Policy at Erfurt University. He also attended the Summer School in Forced Migration at Oxford University in 2009. Asef received his master degree in Public Policy from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy in 2010. Afterward, he worked with a project on Afghanistan media with 'Media in Cooperation and Transition' in Berlin and Deutsche Welle in Bonn. He defended his Ph.D. in International Conflict Management in 2016 and published the research under the title of Power Structures in Afghanistan's Rural Communities. 

Asef has also been writing poetry in Persian since 1996 and published three collections in Kabul, Tehran, and Frankfurt.