overview
Ayeh Naraghi heads UNESCO Doha Office’s Culture programmes for the GCC countries and Yemen. The programmes range from protecting cultural heritage sites to promoting contemporary cultural expressions in the arts and cinema. Prior to this position, and based at the UNESCO Headquarters, Naraghi managed the UNESCO- Aschberg Bursaries for Artists Programme–an international artist residency bursary programme–in addition to working on developing a platform to support multi-sector partnerships in cultural industries called the Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity. As part of her efforts to implement the UNESCO Convention on the Promotion and Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Naraghi works on the issue of artist mobility and recognises artist residency programmes to be crucial to intercultural exchanges and understanding. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Social Sciences from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.