Albana is a Lecturer at Gonzaga University. A former journalist in her native Albania, she worked and lived over a decade in multiple conflict affected states and societies in the Middle East as an INGO practitioner, in the sector of Youth and International Development. She received her PhD from the University of Washington, where she studied the social and political impact of online and offline Palestinian Youth activism and their evolving role in the larger context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2019, she was a visiting scholar at Birzeit University where she revised and completed her book “Palestinian Youth Activism in the Internet Age”. Currently she is a member of the International Research Group at the Swedish Peace, Security and Development agency “Folke Bernadotte Academy”. As a passionate Teacher-Scholar,
Albana seeks to integrate these field-driven development practices with interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives in order to create a classroom where innovative assignments and experiential learning can lead to authentic and lasting relationships with her students and their lifelong learning journey.
