Atifa Rawan

Library Faculty Emeritus at the University of Arizona.

Atifa Rawan is currently a Library Faculty Emeritus at the University of Arizona. She has over 30 years of academic experience in areas of social sciences, Middle Eastern studies languages and collections, and national and international library publications and depository programs.

She has been a member of the Tucson Committee on Foreign Relations (TCFR) with good standing for over 5 years and committed to remaining her membership in this great Tucson organization. In June of 2023, Atifa joined the TCFR Executive Board membership.

Atifa has worked in serval library and other institutions in the United States including a library faculty position at the University of Arizona since 1985. She had served in several leadership library and campus-wide projects and grant activities at the University of Arizona including projects related to Afghanistan as a project coordinator, grant investigator, and as a project director. Since the fall of Taliban in 2001, she has travelled numerous times to Afghanistan as a trainer and as a consultant. She has been a Project Investigator and Director for Afghanistan Digital Library since 2007. The purpose of this international collaborative project is to preserve and to provide access to unique Afghanistan resources especially from the Jihad Period - a collaborative digitization project between the University of Arizona and the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU).

She is a specialist in Library and Information discipline and is on the selected list for the US Fulbright Specialist Roster Program. Presently serving on the Board of Trustees of the American Institute for Afghanistan Studies (AISA) and on the board of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona.

Atifa has a BA in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Hawaii, a Master’s degree in educational Anthropology from New York University (NYU), and a Master’s in library and Information Science (MLS) from the University of South Carolina. She is member of the American Library Association and is the recipient of the American Library Association (ALA) Elizabeth Futus Catalyst for Change award in 2005.

She has numerous scholarly publications, national awards and scholarships, and grants for her work in Afghanistan and for her leadership in Librarianship including the U.S.S. Arizona Bell (Outstanding University Achievements 2008 and 2009 award) and a certificate of honor award from the University of Arizona on her work with digitization of Afghanistan’s unique literature.
Atifa was a recipient of the European Union program to attend a weeklong workshop in Brussels, Belgium, June 1997, and a recipient of East-West Center full scholarship, University of Hawaii for her undergraduate program. She was the first Afghan woman in Afghanistan to receive the East West Center scholarship in 1966.