Sadaf Saaz

Sadaf Saaz is a poet, writer, entrepreneur, molecular biologist, and women’s rights advocate.   She was born in USA, and grew up in the UK. She studied Molecular Biology at University of Cambridge. She now lives in Dhaka. 

She is a festival director and the producer of Dhaka Lit Fest, which she co-founded in 2011, and has been the driving force behind the festival since its inception.  She runs an arts management and content production company Jatrik, which produces Dhaka Lit Fest, and many other theatrical and cultural productions and events, as well as bespoke travel experiences. She is a passionate promoter of the arts, literature and culture, and is a founding trustee of Shadhona, a Centre which nurtures South Asian performing arts.

Sadaf’s debut poetry collection Sari Reams, was published in November 2013, by UPL. Her poem, Sari Reams, was chosen to represent Bangladesh in BBC Glasgow’s Postcards initiative for the Commonwealth Games in Scotland in 2014. Her writings have appeared in publications like Wasafiri, Weber, Kindlemag, Index on Censorship, Critical Muslim, The Best Asian Poetry 2021, Post colonial Journal of writing,  and Peril. She contributed a chapter to ‘The state of the world’s refugees’, published in Berlin in 2018. Her play of monologues ‘Je Kotha jai na bola’ (That which cannot be said), based on Bangladeshi women’s lives, has been performed in various locations in Bangladesh. She has recited her poetry in India, United Kingdom, Pakistan, Germany, Australia and Bangladesh. She is currently writing a novel.

Sadaf has also been in the textile business for many years in Bangladesh in manufacturing and exporting ready-made garments in Bangladesh to the rest of the world.

Sadaf has done work on bioinformatics and transposons in the jute genome corresponding with acquiring stress-resistant genetic variants. She has been active in promoting links between academia and industry, and encouraging investment in biotechnology and science. She recently founded EskeGen, a clinical research organization, to carry out BE/BA studies, clinical trials, and research.

Sadaf is a member of the women’s activist organization, Naripokkho. She has conducted research, critiques, advocacy and activism in the areas of violence against women (VAW), women’s political participation, women’s legal rights, women’s health and reproductive rights, and sexuality. She was on the working group of the first pilot study on VAW (1997) in Bangladesh, and carried out a Rapid assessment study on VAW (1997), a quantitative and qualitative analysis which was the basis for the adoption of the government’s Multi-Sectoral Programme on VAW. She was also part of the working group on the Bangladesh portion of the first WHO multi-country study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence (2005), and represented Bangladesh on the Asia Pacific Forum for Women, Law and Development’s (APWLD) task force on VAW from 2005-2008, where she worked on their Access to Justice initiative, undertaking research on women’s notions of justice (2008). She was a member of the working group of Naripokkho’s action research project ‘Monitoring State Interventions to Combat Violence against Women’ which regularly monitored the hospitals, courts and police stations, with regards to handling cases of violence against women (1997-2012), which covered all thanas of Dhaka, as well as areas throughout all five divisions of Bangladesh, working closely with a network of over 550 women’s led organisations (convened by Naripokkho), called Doorbar. She also led a three-year qualitative research study Exploring the Experiences of Male Perpetrators of Violence against Women in Bangladesh (Naripokkho, 2010).  She has worked with women who have suffered sexual violence under armed conflict, including the women who had been raped during 1971 Bangladesh war of Independence, and the Rohingya refugee women in the camps at the Bangladesh border in 2017 and 2018. She is now working on supporting women in science and technology. 

Sadaf is a Founding Trustee and Chair of the Executive Committee of Bangladesh Business and Disability Network (BBDN), and is Chairman of Safety Assistance for Emergencies (SAFE), a non-profit trust which she co-founded in 2001, which focuses in the areas of response to extreme climate events, disaster relief, occupational health, emergency response and environmental sustainability, working particularly with youth volunteers and the community. SAFE was involved with rescue efforts after the Rana Plaza collapse. 

Sadaf is currently on the Board of Trustees of Brac University, and is on the Executive Committee of the Association of Private Universities, Bangladesh (APUB). She is on the governing body of the Research Centre for Mathematical and Physical Science, University of Chittagong (JNI-RCMPS) – a Centre committed to advanced research in the sciences.