Tragic News

This week has been tough. Just few days ago many of us received some shocking news that Jackie Kirk, a pioneer in the field of education in emergencies and in girls’ education was one of the three female IRC aid workers killed in Afghanistan. While I did not know Jackie well, I admired her greatly. Her work and her writings inspired me in so many ways – she herself visited South Sudan many times and wrote constantly about the educational struggles that girls specifically face in post-war places like this. I was fortunate enough to interview her a number of times for a paper that Jane and I wrote last year, and so excited to meet her in New York just three months ago. I remember stalking her in each of the sessions where she presented at the CIES conference and then finally, I remember her walking into the workshop where Carrie and I were serving as volunteers and thinking, “Oh my goodness, there is Jackie Kirk! I am finally going to get to meet her!” After having read about every piece of research she had published, it was like meeting a rock star (I know, I am a huge dork). But obviously, she was even more fantastic in person. She was warm and personable, clearly brilliant, extremely giving with her time and knowledge, and had an incredible amount of energy. I’m sure that she was not perfect, but in the short year that I got to know her, and in the years of reading leading up to our conversations and emails, I became the biggest fan of Jackie Kirk. Her death is a terribly sad loss to me personally, but more than that, it is a tragic loss to this field. She will be so missed.