Wahab, Shaista

Biography

Shaista Wahab was an employee of the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 1981 until her retirement in 2016. For that full time, she served as the curator of the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection. At the time of her retiremennt, she was a full UNO professor and librarian in the Criss Library Archives and Special Collections.

"Ms. Wahab maintains the largest collection of research materials on Afghanistan in the United States. Before coming to Omaha in 1981, she worked for the Kabul Public Library and USAID in Afghanistan. In 2003 she helped archive Constitutional Loya Jirga documents and built a library for CLJ delegates. Ms. Wahab also led the Afghan Oral History Project, teaching oral history to Afghan women journalists and collecting video interviews for the 2003 PBS documentary Afghanistan Unveiled. She traveled to the country’s most remote areas and recorded the personal experiences of Afghan women who lived through the Soviet invasion. Her most recent publications include A Brief History of Afghanistan (2010) and Beginner’s Dari (2006). She speaks English, Dari, and some Pashto."

Source: "Team Members." University of Nebraska at Omaha Center for Afghanistan Studies website. Retrieved on 2016-02-17: http://world.unomaha.edu/cas/team.php