Faisal Karimi

Founder & Director, Afghanistan Institute for Research and Media Studies (Afghanistan)

JSK Fellow, Stanford University

Karimi is a speaker at the 25th ISOJ, happening from April 12 – 13, 2024, both online and in person at the University of Texas at Austin.

Faisal Karimi is the founder and director of the Afghanistan Institute for Research and Media Studies, which includes Afghanistan Women’s News Agency, a multimedia news platform to cover women’s issues in that country, and Kaashi Media. He is the founder and editor in chief of both of those organizations. In 2021, after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and increasing threats to journalists, Faisal helped employees of his women’s news agency — a team of female journalists and producers — escape to the U.S. He continues to run his organization in exile, reflecting the voices of Afghan women and providing much needed information and news to people in Afghanistan. Currently, Faisal is also a journalism visiting scholar at San José State University; he is conducting research on journalism under Taliban rule. Prior to the Taliban takeover, he also taught in the School of Journalism and Communication at his alma mater Herat University in western Afghanistan. He is currently a JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.