Shirin Haacke holds a Bachelor degree in Arabic Studies from Freie Universitaet Berlin. She volunteers for refugees and became a mentor in the Buddy-Program "Welcome@FU-Berlin". Currently she is finishing her Master degree in Islamic Studies at Freie Universitaet Berlin.

In her BA thesis, Shirin Haacke focused on the political poetry of a very well-known Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, and its standing in the mind of the Palestinian people, since his poems are part of the Palestinian heritage. In her MA thesis, she is going to work on the question how objects of cultural value, i.e. literature, music and arts, define a nation, what their function is, and why they are so important to people. Shirin will focus on several poems of Mahmoud Darwish, addressing the memorization of Palestinian people’s history since 1948, and how, what exactly und why people are reciting especially his poetry.