Dr. Saja Al Zoubi is a Development Economist and Assistant Professor at the Department of International Development Studies (IDS) at Dalhousie University, Canada. She is a co-leader of the Global Young Academy’s At-Risk Scholars Initiative and a member of the Scientific Committee for the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) program under the International Science Council.

Previously, Dr. Al Zoubi served as a lecturer in Gender and Forced Migration and Middle East Politics at Christ Church College and the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. She was also a researcher at the Oxford Department of International Development and a visiting professor at the University of Glasgow.

Her work centers on gender and rural development, with a strong emphasis on women’s empowerment, peacebuilding, and conflict prevention. She has served as a consultant for UN Women and the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) in New York, as well as a gender and livelihoods expert for the European Union Delegation to Syria.

Since the onset of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Dr. Al Zoubi has focused her research on improving livelihoods and food security among displaced and refugee populations—particularly women, girls, and women-headed households. Her areas of expertise include gender-based violence, education, capacity building, and the impact of host country policies on refugee livelihoods.