Daliya Saadoon is currently an advanced medical student at Boston University. Saadoon graduated from UVA in 2019 with a bachelor’s in biology and worked as a medical assistant before starting her Fulbright grant at the Charite University Hospital in Berlin. At the Charite, Saadoon's research focused on mental health issues, including those related to COVID-19, among the city's refugee population. In her presentation, Saadoon will also reflect on her own experiences as a child refugee from Iraq who immigrated to the United States in 2009.
Marie Poole is a social worker from Charlottesville who holds a Master of Social Work with a Concentration in Clinical Practice from Virginia Commonwealth University (2023), as well as a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences from the University of Virginia (2014). Poole's rich professional and volunteer experiences are rooted in issues of addiction, mental health, low-income housing, human trafficking, policy, and more. In her presentation, Poole will illuminate the ways in which these issues affect the lives of refugees in Charlottesville and beyond.
Katia Povzner is the pedagogical coordinator at the Shvilim Elementary School in Tel-Aviv, a school for children who cope with behavioral and emotional problems, and who predominantly come with families of refugees and asylum seekers. Drawing on her experiences at the school as well as expertise in Special Education, Povzner will reflect on the intersection of emotional, pedagogical, literacy, and language problems that are commonly identified among refugee children at her school.
This panel was made possible through the generous support of the Center for German Studies, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia.
Organizers: Zvi Gilboa (MESALC) and Marcel Schmid (German)
