Shirin Youssefian Maanian is a performer and a women’s rights activist. She is a founder member of HandMaid Productions, an international women’s theatre company, based in Athens.

Her passion for combining theatre and social issues has produced works on breast cancer, human rights abuse and the treatment of women in Iran. She works in Greece on the executive board of various non-governmental organisations dealing with Greek-Turkish relations, women of Iran and Afghanistan and human trafficking.

She has performed at EU conferences on gender issues, under the Greek EU Presidency, and was invited by the Women’s Commission of the Portuguese Government to perform at the launching of their new national gender programme. She was also invited to perform PURE at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Her Persian background, British upbringing, life in Romania and now in Greece, have all contributed to her identity as a world citizen.

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