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Shrouk El-Attar ( ar, شروق العطار) is an electronics
design engineer
A design engineer is an engineer focused on the engineering design process in any of the various engineering disciplines (including civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, textiles, aerospace, nuclear, manufacturing, systems, and structural /buil ...
who was born in
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
and has been living in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
as a
refugee
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution. since 2007. She is an activist for refugee rights in the UK, and for
LGBT rights
Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Notably, , 33 ...
in her native Egypt.
El-Attar performs as a belly dancer in an act called "Dancing Queer", to raise funds for legal defense fees for
LGBT
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
people in Egypt, and to help with relocation for those persecuted and at risk because of their gender or sexuality.
El-Attar was one of the women chosen by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
in 2018 as one of the
100 Most Influential Women in the World, and was selected by the
Institution of Engineering and Technology
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is a multidisciplinary professional engineering institution. The IET was formed in 2006 from two separate institutions: the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), dating back to 1871, and ...
as a 2021 Young Woman Engineer of the Year.
Childhood and refugee status
Shrouk El-Attar grew up in
Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
. She realized her sexual interest in women at a young age, but was put off by people in her immediate surroundings, such as teachers, who told her that
homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
was a "terrible sin".
El-Attar arrived in the UK in 2007, at the age of 15, together with her mother and siblings. However, their asylum claim was rejected, and they were deported during an immigration dawn raid on her family home while she was staying at a friend's house. El-Attar was eventually granted asylum because of her LGBT status.
She describes the process she went through as difficult and even humiliating: "I had to produce evidence about sexual intercourse. Not the nicest thing, having to call up your exes and ask them to write about the time they had sex with you. And, you know, it's really graphic detail. I think that a lot of LGBT+ refugees have had similar experiences, of feeling really humiliated, and dehumanized."
El-Attar states that she was lucky because she had already been living in the UK for a while before going through the process, but that other refugees who might be escaping death or incarceration, would not necessarily have the same access to correspondence and communication in order to fulfill this type of requirement.
El-Attar identifies as
Queer
''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...
, an umbrella term covering a multitude of sexual and gender minorities. She has expressed her conviction that she would not be alive were she to try and live her life openly in Egypt, as she does in the UK, referring to forced marriage and other types of violence perpetrated upon LGBT people in her homeland.
Activism
In 2018, El-Attar joined other refugee rights campaigners to address the
British parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremacy ...
, and tell about their experiences.
One of El-Attar's primary issues on behalf of refugees is access to education.
In Egypt, during her early teens, El-Attar was two years ahead of her classmates and was set to start university at 16. But her arrival in Britain changed all that. Although as of 2018 El-Attar was studying for her Master's degree in engineering at
Cardiff University
, latin_name =
, image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University
, motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord
, mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord
, established = 1 ...
, she herself was denied the chance to study at university during the years she was applying for
asylum
Asylum may refer to:
Types of asylum
* Asylum (antiquity), places of refuge in ancient Greece and Rome
* Benevolent Asylum, a 19th-century Australian institution for housing the destitute
* Cities of Refuge, places of refuge in ancient Judea
...
, according to nationwide university policy, which treated asylum seekers as international students, subject to vastly higher fees, while at the same time forbidding them to work.
This effectively barred her and other of the most vulnerable prospective students. Moreover, this was in spite of the fact that she was accepted into every university she applied to.
While she was waiting for her opportunity to achieve her higher education, El-Attar joined the activist group STAR - Student Action for Refugees, and campaigned for asylum seekers to be treated as British students within the educational system.
There are now more than 60 universities in the UK accepting asylum seekers as students and she is now sits on the board of trustees for the charity STAR - Student Action for Refugees with over 30,000 volunteers across the UK.
In March 2018, Shrouk was awarded ''Young Woman of the Year 2018'' by the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
refugee agency
UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...
, for her work on behalf of refugee rights in the UK.
Dancing Queer
El-Attar describes the freedom she found to be queer as a liberating and life-changing experience. But not one that was all good - two years after arriving in the UK, at 17, her family found out about her queer identity, and their relationships fell apart. Though forced to leave home at a young age and to go through a separate and invasive asylum process, El-Attar recognized her own privilege as compared to her "LGBTQ+ siblings" back in Egypt, and was determined to continue and fight for their rights as well.
She began dancing at charity and political events as the
belly dancing
Belly dance (Egyptian Arabic: رقص بلدي, translated: Dance of the Country/Folk Dance, romanized: Raks/Raas Baladi) is a dance that originates in Egypt. It features movements of the hips and torso. It has evolved to take many different f ...
"Dancing Queer", a beard-wearing drag persona who embodies her political statements about body hair, beauty standards, gender expression, sexuality and more. She raises money for legal fees and relocation expenses for persecuted Egyptian queers, and works to raise awareness to their plight.
Her most recent of three speeches to parliament, as well as the
UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...
and her inclusion in the
BBC 100 list, came on the heels of a major crackdown on LGBT people in Egypt. Though homosexuality is not technically illegal in Egypt, the social and governmental approaches to homosexuality are extremely negative. Towards the end of 2017, during the
Mashrou' Leila
Mashrou' Leila ( ar, مشروع ليلى, link=no, Latn, ar, Mashrūʿ Laylā, ; sometimes transliterated as Mashrou3 Leila or translated as Leila's Project) was a Lebanese four-member indie rock band. The band formed in Beirut, Lebanon in 2008 ...
rainbow concert, members of the audience were arrested for unfurling a rainbow flag in support of LGBT rights. One man has been sentenced to six years in jail for 'practicing debauchery' on his way home from the concert. After this incident, Egypt’s Supreme Council for Media Regulation decided to ban 'all forms of promotion or sympathy towards the LGBT community on media outlets, on account of it being a 'shameful disease'. Unless an LGBTQ+ individual is going live to 'show repentance and remorse over their sexuality,' they're not to be portrayed in a positive light.
In addition, Egypt has been considering a new law to ban homosexuality, which is likely to escalate the situation for LGBTQ Egyptians.
El-Attar has taken her performance all over the UK, as well as internationally, to places such as France, the Netherlands and Japan.
Engineering career and
STEM
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
outreach
El-Attar is an electronic design engineer. She completed her bachelor and master degrees in engineering at
Cardiff University
, latin_name =
, image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University
, motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord
, mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord
, established = 1 ...
.
Previously, she worked as a system design engineer in Cardiff, an assistant lecturer of engineering, an interpreter, a museum guide, and as a theatre and radio actor, in such productions as ''Stori, A telling'' , at the Welsh Millennium Centre, ''Nothing is Out of Place'' on
Radio Cardiff
Radio Cardiff (98.7 FM) is a community radio station serving Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. It broadcasts on a terrestrial frequency of 98.7 FM, via DAB in Cardiff and streams online via their website and TuneIn. The station was formerly ...
, and ''Praxis Makes Perfect (Interactive Theatre)'' at the
National Theatre of Wales
National Theatre Wales (NTW) is a theatre company known for its large-scale site-specific productions and its grassroots work with diverse Welsh communities. It is the English-language national theatre of Wales, and refers to Theatr Genedlaetho ...
.
She credits her interest in
Electronic Engineering
Electronics engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering which emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current ...
to one of her earliest memories realising that people on TV were not small sized humans living inside it; making her think that electronics were a form of magic. Now working at
Renishaw, she designs electronic circuits for
encoders that can provide measurements in nanometers, and for industrial robotic
Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM).
She previously worked with surgeons operating on the eye and undertook engineering placements at microprocessor manufacturer,
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
, and with
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
in Kawasaki, Japan, where she presented about her role in developing Optical Network Communication products in the Japanese language. She subsequently became the Electronic Engineering Industry Mentor at
Cardiff University
, latin_name =
, image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University
, motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord
, mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord
, established = 1 ...
, where she studied.
For her master’s research in
Electron Paramagnetic Resonance
Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) or electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy is a method for studying materials that have unpaired electrons. The basic concepts of EPR are analogous to those of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), but the spin ...
(EPR), she created new methods utilising microwaves to identify organic material based on electron
quantum spin
Spin is a conserved quantity carried by elementary particles, and thus by composite particles (hadrons) and atomic nuclei.
Spin is one of two types of angular momentum in quantum mechanics, the other being ''orbital angular momentum''. The orbita ...
, including some cancers. During her BEng, Shrouk spoke on the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
about developing IoT Hydroponic systems for the Welsh start-up, Phytoponics. Upon graduation, Cardiff University chose to write it