Migrant Tales; Stories of immigrants who came to Europe
Jan 26, 2017 6:58:03 GMT -4
Souriquois, Liza, and 4 more like this
Post by Gotlander on Jan 26, 2017 6:58:03 GMT -4
I noticed Laly on Anthroscape created a thread called "Immigrants in Europe" which is basically used to bash non-European immigrants in Europe, there is not a single positive news story posted there about someone who is or was an immigrant in Europe. This is unfair to those immigrants who have succeeded, made a positive contribution to society and so on. Hence I decided to open this thread to showcase individuals who overcame the odds to succeed in Europe (when facing cultural barriers, racism, language issues, culture shock, etc).
Here goes:
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Alexis Kouros (born 1961, in Kermanshah, Iran) is an Iranian-Finnish writer, documentary-maker, director and producer.
His first book, Gondwana's Children, won the Finlandia Junior award in 1997. His first film was the 2000 documentary, Waiting for Godot at De Gaulle, the story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri.
He also directed a documentary called Without My Daughter in response to the 1991 Hollywood movie, Not Without My Daughter. He started his production company Dream Catcher. The company started publishing Finland's first English language monthly called SixDegrees in 2003. Helsinki Times, a weekly English newspaper was established by Dream Catcher in April 2007.
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Sara Zahedi (born 1981 in Tehran) is an Iranian-Swedish mathematician who works in computational fluid dynamics and holds an assistant professorship in numerical analysis at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden. She is one of ten winners and the only female winner of the European Mathematical Society Prize for 2016 "for her outstanding research regarding the development and analysis of numerical algorithms for partial differential equations with a focus on applications to problems with dynamically changing geometry". The topic of Zahedi's EMS Prize lecture was her recent research on the CutFEM method of solving fluid dynamics problems with changing boundary geometry, such as arise when simulating the dynamics of systems of two immiscible liquids. This method combines level set methods to represent the domain boundaries as cuts through an underlying uniform grid, together with numerical simulation techniques that can adapt to the complex geometries of grid cells cut by these boundaries.
When Zahedi was only ten years old, with her father having been killed by the regime after the Iranian Revolution, her mother sent her on her own as a refugee to Sweden, and only rejoined her some years later. She was drawn to mathematics in part because she understood mathematics better than the Swedish language, and to fluid mechanics because of its real-world applications. She earned a master's degree from KTH in 2006, and a doctorate in 2011; her dissertation, entitled Numerical Methods for Fluid Interface Problems, was supervised by Gunilla Kreiss. After postdoctoral studies at Uppsala University, she returned to KTH as an assistant professor in 2014.
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Buba Badjie is a Gambian–Swedish veterinarian and entrepreneur born 1967 in the village of Jambanjelli, the Gambia.
Badjie was born into a farming community. His parents had cattle and grew mango and peanuts. He excelled in the village school and got the opportunity to attend an elite school, also used by the president of Gambia's children. His interest in academia and farming inspired him to become a veterinarian. He looked for scholarships around the world to acquire such a degree. He ended up attending veterinary studies in Ukraine Agriculture University, Kiev (then part of the USSR). He learned Russian in 6 months and graduated a few years later.
Badjie made regular visits to Sweden and met his future wife Cecilia. When he arrived in Sweden it turned out he could not work as a veterinarian with a Soviet degree and attended Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, faculty of veterinary medicine in Uppsala, Sweden. After graduating as a veterinarian for the second time, Badjie worked as DVO in the province of Gästrikland as station manager and as the Manager Veterinary Services and Veterinary Technical Manager for Sweden and Finland for Procter & Gamble/ The Iams Company Europe (based in Switzerland). While he enjoyed his job with Procter & Gamble his dream was to return to his new home land Sweden and open his own veterinary clinic in Stockholm.
Today he owns and operates animal hospital Bromma Djurklinik. In 2007, he was featured in ads and became a spokesperson for Fri Företagsamhet promoting entrepreneurship.
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Ashiq Hussain (Doctor rerum naturae) is a Pakistani-German neuroscientist who is known for carrying out investigations on neuronal interactions within the olfactory system and for aging associated Neurodegeneration.
Hussain received his BSc (Hons.) in Genetics with distinction of magna cum laude from University of Agriculture, Faisalabad in Pakistan and M.Phil in Molecular Biology from the prestigious Center for Applied and Molecular Biology, with summa cum laude and Prof. Ishrat Hussain Usmani memorial research gold medal. He received PhD (Neuroscience), at the age of 29, with highest distinction of summa cum laude form University of Cologne in Germany while conducting his research both at the University of Cologne and the Harvard University. Hussain pursued his post-doctoral research at the Yale University and Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology. Since 2014, Dr. Hussain is an "Open Access Ambassador" of Max Planck Society.
Here goes:
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Alexis Kouros (born 1961, in Kermanshah, Iran) is an Iranian-Finnish writer, documentary-maker, director and producer.
His first book, Gondwana's Children, won the Finlandia Junior award in 1997. His first film was the 2000 documentary, Waiting for Godot at De Gaulle, the story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri.
He also directed a documentary called Without My Daughter in response to the 1991 Hollywood movie, Not Without My Daughter. He started his production company Dream Catcher. The company started publishing Finland's first English language monthly called SixDegrees in 2003. Helsinki Times, a weekly English newspaper was established by Dream Catcher in April 2007.
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Sara Zahedi (born 1981 in Tehran) is an Iranian-Swedish mathematician who works in computational fluid dynamics and holds an assistant professorship in numerical analysis at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden. She is one of ten winners and the only female winner of the European Mathematical Society Prize for 2016 "for her outstanding research regarding the development and analysis of numerical algorithms for partial differential equations with a focus on applications to problems with dynamically changing geometry". The topic of Zahedi's EMS Prize lecture was her recent research on the CutFEM method of solving fluid dynamics problems with changing boundary geometry, such as arise when simulating the dynamics of systems of two immiscible liquids. This method combines level set methods to represent the domain boundaries as cuts through an underlying uniform grid, together with numerical simulation techniques that can adapt to the complex geometries of grid cells cut by these boundaries.
When Zahedi was only ten years old, with her father having been killed by the regime after the Iranian Revolution, her mother sent her on her own as a refugee to Sweden, and only rejoined her some years later. She was drawn to mathematics in part because she understood mathematics better than the Swedish language, and to fluid mechanics because of its real-world applications. She earned a master's degree from KTH in 2006, and a doctorate in 2011; her dissertation, entitled Numerical Methods for Fluid Interface Problems, was supervised by Gunilla Kreiss. After postdoctoral studies at Uppsala University, she returned to KTH as an assistant professor in 2014.
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Buba Badjie is a Gambian–Swedish veterinarian and entrepreneur born 1967 in the village of Jambanjelli, the Gambia.
Badjie was born into a farming community. His parents had cattle and grew mango and peanuts. He excelled in the village school and got the opportunity to attend an elite school, also used by the president of Gambia's children. His interest in academia and farming inspired him to become a veterinarian. He looked for scholarships around the world to acquire such a degree. He ended up attending veterinary studies in Ukraine Agriculture University, Kiev (then part of the USSR). He learned Russian in 6 months and graduated a few years later.
Badjie made regular visits to Sweden and met his future wife Cecilia. When he arrived in Sweden it turned out he could not work as a veterinarian with a Soviet degree and attended Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, faculty of veterinary medicine in Uppsala, Sweden. After graduating as a veterinarian for the second time, Badjie worked as DVO in the province of Gästrikland as station manager and as the Manager Veterinary Services and Veterinary Technical Manager for Sweden and Finland for Procter & Gamble/ The Iams Company Europe (based in Switzerland). While he enjoyed his job with Procter & Gamble his dream was to return to his new home land Sweden and open his own veterinary clinic in Stockholm.
Today he owns and operates animal hospital Bromma Djurklinik. In 2007, he was featured in ads and became a spokesperson for Fri Företagsamhet promoting entrepreneurship.
------------------------------------------------
Ashiq Hussain (Doctor rerum naturae) is a Pakistani-German neuroscientist who is known for carrying out investigations on neuronal interactions within the olfactory system and for aging associated Neurodegeneration.
Hussain received his BSc (Hons.) in Genetics with distinction of magna cum laude from University of Agriculture, Faisalabad in Pakistan and M.Phil in Molecular Biology from the prestigious Center for Applied and Molecular Biology, with summa cum laude and Prof. Ishrat Hussain Usmani memorial research gold medal. He received PhD (Neuroscience), at the age of 29, with highest distinction of summa cum laude form University of Cologne in Germany while conducting his research both at the University of Cologne and the Harvard University. Hussain pursued his post-doctoral research at the Yale University and Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology. Since 2014, Dr. Hussain is an "Open Access Ambassador" of Max Planck Society.