Zara Rahman

[Image credit: an amazing visualisation on migration flows, on http://global-migration.info] In a couple of weeks, my brother is getting married.

A few weeks ago, someone asked me at a party, “Where do you come from?”

This week, after a couple of months break, I returned to adding things to my project website.

This week is my three year anniversary of moving to Berlin (my three-year-Berliniversary, if you will.)

Image credit: Joanna Walsh, who came up with the campaign It's July already, which means I'm six months through my challenge of a. reading 50 books this year, and b. only reading books by women, as part of the #readwomen2014 campaign, and I'm thoroughly e…

“That guy just said something really racist* to me.”

I asked recently on Twitter if anyone had recommendations for reading material on the topic of postcolonial feminism; admittedly, a very general question, but sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start when you're new to a certain topic.

Below, in German.

When I was starting off my professional career, I was lucky to receive a number of pieces of advice.

Realising that not all of my friends had a “rice bin” in their kitchen was a revelation to my 11-year-old self.

This weekend, there were two hashtags that caught my eye on Twitter: #sexismturnedaround and #YesAllWomen.

As I've mentioned before on here, I'm in the middle of setting up a new website for my project, the Open Development Toolkit.

Lots of the explanations here are Tryggvi's wise words; I thought they might be useful to others, so he kindly let me copy them over!

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been focusing my efforts at work on the online presence of my project, the Open Development Toolkit.

When we talk about “open government”, it’s common to also hear talk of transparency and accountability alongside.

I recently came across Alice Bell's rather wonderful piece, “How to tell a white person they are being racist.”

Majority World feminism Summary: I'm on the hunt for examples of feminism and gender equality from the majority world, AKA low-income countries.

“I'm not racist but...” began a conversation between myself and a German man last Sunday, while at an afternoon brunch party with a mixture of people I knew and people I didn't, all of them white.

I recently started learning how to code, and increasingly, I've been noticing the similarities and differences in the skills I'm developing now and those I developed at university, while studying languages.

Over the past couple of years I've heard and read numerous media items about the internet and its effect on linking our previously disconnected societies, on networks and their effect on our relationships, and on cyberpolitics and culture.

A good friend of mine recently asked me for some motivational help on getting started blogging.

The worst kind of creep is he who thinks of himself as a Good Man.

As I've been learning more about coding, a number of unusual terms and phrases have come up, and I've been having fun finding out more and discovering their etymology.

I've been talking about 'mansplaining' a lot this week; first, to some female friends who hadn't previously heard the term but immediately understood the concept, and then a few days later, to explain to other friends why I particularly disliked certain p…

Over the past couple of months, I've had the privilege of travelling to Bangladesh, Canada, Spain and Switzerland, and oddly, I found that all four had an unexpected quality in common; the way in which different languages within the country influenced and…

Data collection and use in humanitarian situations is increasing.

Dear white feminist public figures, I'm writing to ask, quite simply, that you remember and recognise that the feminist movement is a global movement.

For me, a good book is one that makes me change how I think about things, or how I behave- for better or for worse.

This week, I learned what Git really is, how to use it via the command line, and forked this lovely site to make this, my first Jekyll site!

All too quickly, my time in Dhaka has ended, and I'm back in Europe already.

Before I forget, and before I start making more lists of things I want to read this year, here are the top books I read this year.

I've been coming across articles highlighting 2013's greatest feminist moments - this 28 Most Iconic Feminist moments of 2013 for example, or the 25 best moments for women in 2013 - and while they have some brilliant moments included, I couldn't help but…

The strikes and violence in Bangladesh have been continuing, and as ever, it's been frustrating and annoying to myself and my family, but we're the lucky ones.

The strikes and blockades going on at the moment in Dhaka have been, to say the least, disruptive to people's lives, and they show no sign of slowing.

As I've been telling people I'm heading to Bangladesh for the next couple of months, the reactions have been somewhat telling about public - or rather, European - perceptions of the country.

Earlier this week, the UK Conservative party deleted press releases and speeches from their website from the years 2000-2010, ie. until just before they were elected into government.

I'm reading 'A Woman in Berlin' at the moment.

Our challenge: give Open Development a reality check, at Open for Change’s Open Development Camp in Amsterdam.

It came, it went, and it left us all exhausted.

This article, on Posh white blokes in NGOs, caught my eye a couple of weeks ago.

And there you have a sentence that, incredulously, I keep hearing from my peers.

While the hustle and bustle of this week's OKCon is still fresh in my mind, I wanted to write down a few impressions.

Last week, by a massive stroke of luck, I had the chance to meet Professor Mohammed Yunus, together with Transparency International founder Peter Eigen, talk about a new initiative of theirs, the Garment Industries Transparency Initiative.

My first try using iMovie - a trailer for our upcoming conference, OKCon http://okcon.org in Geneva in two weeks time!

I've been looking for some books to read about Bangladesh for a while now, both fiction and non-fiction, so when a discussion about books covering the historical and political context of the country came up in an online group, I wanted to make sure these…

I just finished reading Mohammed Yunus' first book about the Grameen Bank, 'Banker to the Poor'.

Somehow I've been living in Germany for just over two years now, and with this experience I've found myself in the position of trying to give friends who are settling advice on coming over here, how to deal with German bureaucracy (argh) and, most recentl…

Recently, I've been coming across a misconception that I'd like to address – that prejudices like racism and sexism don't exist in the so-called “developed” world.

Yesterday, I came across this article, "What happened when I started a feminist society at school" and it still has my blood boiling.

I'm preparing for tonight's Datatón, and have been looking up lots of words in Spanish that I've never come across.