arshad siddiqui

Press Freedom and Digital Authoritarianism in South Asia Bangladesh's Digital Security Act: A Case Study in Transnational Digital Repression Journalism in Exile: Challenges, Isolation, and Strategies for Continuing the Work Media Freedom During Political Transitions (Bangladesh's 2024 uprising and its aftermath) Minority and Indigenous Rights in South Asian Media and Policy The Right to Information: Building and Defending Government Transparency Laws Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding in Divided Societies Literature and Exile: Bengali Poetry, Storytelling, and Writing Across Displacement Documentary Photography as a Tool for Human Rights Storytelling Community-Building and Intercultural Dialogue in Migrant/Refugee Contexts

Founder of Spark Axis Academy, the education division of Pranto Barta, where I developed courses and curriculum on journalism and media literacy. Author of sixteen books, including two poetry collections. Founder of Mass-Line Media Center. Helped pioneer Press Freedom Day in Bangladesh and contributed to the drafting of the Right to Information Act 2009. I also completed an advanced conflict transformation training programme (KURVE Wustrow / Friedenskreis Halle, certified April 2026), and developed a bilingual conflict transformation workshop curriculum and trainer's manual for Passage 13, a community centre in Halle where I volunteer.

Having worked across journalism, literature, human rights advocacy, and community peacebuilding for over thirty years, I hope to help students see how these fields connect in practice — not as separate disciplines, but as different tools for the same underlying work of truth-telling and dialogue. My style is grounded in storytelling, lived experience, and real cases rather than abstract theory.