• Researcher
• Poet & Writer
• Media strategist

Dr. 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 the Cold War. He completed his primary and secondary education there. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Asef repatriated to Afghanistan at the age of 22 and studied Philosophy and Sociology at Kabul University.

During education, he also participated in political activities and worked as the editor and then, the chief-in-editor of the only opposition weekly Saday-e Mardom (the Voice of People). In 2005, as a student at Kabul University, Asef ran for a seat in the first Afghanistan Parliament, and meanwhile was one of the leaders 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’s in public policy at Erfurt University. He also attended the Summer School in Forced Migration at Oxford University in 2009. Asef received his master’s degree in Public Policy from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy in 2010. Afterward, he worked with 'Media in Cooperation and Transition' in Berlin before joining the Deutsche Welle in Bonn in 2011.

Asef conducted his doctoral research in International Conflict Management and defended his Ph.D. in 2017.

Asef has been writing poetry in Persian since 1996 and published three collections in Kabul, Tehran, and Frankfurt. (List of publications)

He is currently working as an independent researcher, writer, and online editor.