Malala Yousafzai is a 22-year-old Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize winner in history.

Her life story is particularly striking: her family ran schools in Pakistan under the Taliban occupation. As a student, Malala spoke out about her experiences in a time when girls attending school went against the Taliban ideals. 

When she was 11, she wrote a blog post under a pseudonym for the BBC about her life under the Taliban; she was also the focus of a New York Times documentary about life in the middle of military occupation. 

Back then she was already an activist, hoping to establish her own national party promoting education and to create the Malala Education Foundation to help girls like her attend school. 

Her passion for female education went against the Taliban, and in October 2012, Malala was shot by a Taliban gunman on a school bus. 

The murder attempt sparked an international movement to support her, which in turn led Taliban officials to announce a possible second assassination attempt. 

She and her family now live in the UK, where she has continued her activism, founding the Malala Fund and publishing her first book, I Am Malala. 

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her “struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

Since 2018, Malala has been studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford.