Rana Dajani
Biographic Data
| ID | 1730213 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rana Dajani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rana |
| FAMILY NAME | Dajani |
| SIGNATURE | DAJANI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hashemite University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4355-9977 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Understanding and acceptance of evolution and its teaching among biology teachers in an Arab context
Teachers’ knowledge and acceptance of evolution affect their evolution teaching. However, research on the relationship between teachers’ knowledge about and acceptance of evolution is ambiguous. Previous studies suggest that religiosity, gender, academic qualifications, and teaching experience may influence knowledge and acceptance. However, few studies have focused on Arab contexts. This study examined the knowledge about and acceptance of evolu…
Doing Science With Our Grandmother's Wisdom: A Worldview Integrating Sociality, Diversity, and Observant Meaning‐Making
The contemporary moment is defined and marred by geopolitical sorrow‐with genocide in Gaza, and wars in Sudan and Ukraine to mention some‐devastating the lives of millions of people. The resulting geopolitical, ecological, communal, and personal devastation will last for generations in concrete and substantive ways, as the legacy of war and genocide stays with those who survive. In this perspective, we highlight an example of this by discussing n…
Mapping the perceived impacts of a social innovation program on women’s agency and life satisfaction
Our findings suggest that We Love Reading can help change mindsets and meet a fundamental policy goal related to reading habits and knowledge empowerment in the Arab World. They show the need for mapping causal reasoning in systematic ways, taking into account different dimensions of agency in environments where social innovation can flourish
Neocolonialism and science diplomacy: Lessons learned from the field and the way forward
To level the playing field in the production of global knowledge, we need to understand the practical implications of colonial heritage and how it has disproportionately affected scientific discourse and the generation and utilization of scientific knowledge from and about the Global South. This article explores how research practitioners can level the playing field. We must think about how we can collectively change the narrative so that every e…
The war on the Gaza Strip and its consequences on global warming
The ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip is a deeply entrenched issue marked by repeated cycles of violence and devastation. While the immediate human toll and political implications often receive global attention, the war’s environmental impact is equally profound yet underacknowledged. Environmental destruction itself has become a weapon of war, one that not only compounds immediate human suffering but also dismantles possibilities for future liv…
Volunteer programs, empowerment, and life satisfaction in Jordan: Mapping local knowledge and systems change to inform public policy and science diplomacy
Through visual maps and scenarios of change, the study demonstrates a participatory approach to localizing knowledge and evaluating programs. This is key to improving scientific enquiry and public policy
Exploring Factors Related to the Development and Implementation of a Local Intervention Program for Syrian Refugee Children
Many interventions have been developed to improve educational and developmental outcomes in Syrian refugee children. Here, we focus on one such intervention, We Love Reading, a community-led, shared book-reading program that was developed in Jordan by a Jordanian-run NGO. We conducted a grounded theory analysis of 21 semi-structured interviews with individuals who developed We Love Reading and/or were involved in its implementation. Participants …
Coparenting, mental health, and the pursuit of dignity: A systems-level analysis of refugee father-mother narratives
Does volunteering impact refugee women's life satisfaction, empowerment, and wellbeing? Experimental evidence, local knowledge, and causal reasoning
This program evaluation integrates scientifically-rigorous and culturally-relevant methodologies to identify impacts, local knowledge systems, and causal pathways of influence. This helps clarify how and why volunteering works in real-life situations across cultural contexts, calling attention to what programs seek to achieve, how they avoid volunteer burden, and why they generate social change
Facial emotion recognition in refugee children with a history of war trauma
Over 36 million children are currently displaced due to war, yet we know little about how these experiences of war and displacement affect their socioemotional development-notably how they perceive facial expressions. Across three different experiments, we investigated the effects of war trauma exposure on facial emotion recognition in Syrian refugee ( n = 130, M age = 9.3 years, 63 female) and Jordanian nonrefugee children ( n = 148, M age = 9.4…
Attitudes toward dementia and cognitive aging among Syrian refugees resettled in Jordan: A qualitative study
Findings from this study are the first to examine the attitudes of Syrian refugees in Jordan toward dementia and cognitive aging. These results could provide essential data inclusive of refugees as Jordan develops its National Dementia Plan. Investing in dementia awareness interventions and age-friendly neighborhoods may benefit aging refugees in limited-resources settings
Social networks, empowerment, and wellbeing among Syrian refugee and Jordanian women: Implications for development and social inclusion
In response to large-scale refugee crises, frameworks for development assistance have promoted women’s empowerment, wellbeing, and social inclusion. A productive research agenda lies in analyzing social networks: it is unknown how women structure their social ties within refugee and host communities, and whether social networks matter for their sense of empowerment and wellbeing. In 2022, we surveyed Syrian refugee (n = 106) and Jordanian (n = 10…
Variability of CYP2C8 Polymorphisms in Three Jordanian Populations: Circassians, Chechens and Jordanian-Arabs
War-related trauma linked to increased sustained attention to threat in children
Experiences of war and displacement can have profound effects on children's affective development and mental health, although the mechanism(s) underlying these effects remain unknown. This study investigated the link between early adversity and attention to affective stimuli using a free-viewing eye-tracking paradigm with Syrian refugee (n = 31, Mage = 9.55, 12 female) and Jordanian non-refugee (n = 55, Mage = 9.98, 30 female) children living in …
Religion, Islam, and Compliance with Covid-19 Best Practices
Obstacles in the road of biomedical research on Covid-19 in Jordan: Poor funding and beyond
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH ON COVID-19, A BURST OF INVESTIGATIONS AND A LOT OF WASTE Since the spread of COVID-19, dedicated researchers from all over the world worked round the clock to unveil the identity of the new virus and find ways to bring the deadly pandemic to an end. Basic science virologists revealed facts about the [...]
Women in Science: What Are the Barriers for Women in Senior Career Positions
For several years, many governmental and non-governmental agencies, as well as researchers have made great efforts in addressing issues related to the factors that prevent women from pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers. These efforts resulted in better representation of women in these fields both in the Arab countries as well as in other developed countries. However, in these countries, women remain under-repr…
Reading for pleasure among Jordanian children: A community‐based reading intervention
Background We Love Reading (WLR) is a community‐based reading intervention aimed at cultivating an interest in reading for pleasure among children through mobilising local community members to establish informal libraries and organise read‐aloud sessions in public spaces. The programme targets primarily children between the ages 4–10 but is also open to older children. The present study investigated the effect of the WLR programme on children's p…
Adrenocortical and psychosocial responses of families in Jordan to the Covid-19 pandemic
This study of 52 predominantly lower income Jordanian and Syrian families with young children (31 girls; Mage = 53.37 months, SD = 3.53) in Jordan began in 2019, before the pandemic. Families were followed to explore stress physiology, family functioning, and mental health over the first 9 months of the pandemic. Mothers reported less adaptive coping and more negative changes to family life in June 2020 when their children had poorer behavioral s…
Reports: Publications and Films
Melissa Fleming, A Hope More Powerful than the Sea: The Journey of Doaa Al Zamel (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017), 288 pp. Omar Dewachi, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017), xviii + 239 pp. Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, Sonita (Zurich: Xenix Film, 2015), 90 min. Ron Bourke, Terror and Hope: The Science of Resilience (Portland: Collective Eye Films, 2019), 36 min
Comparing online and in-person surveys: Assessing a measure of resilience with Syrian refugee youth
Humanitarian research with Syrian refugees can be difficult to conduct in-person, due to COVID-19 containment, security, and logistics issues. We assessed whether the online implementation of a brief, culturally grounded resilience measure would yield reliable responses for use with children and adolescents in the Middle East region. We implemented an online survey screening for socio-economic status, insecurity, prosocial behaviour, and resilien…
The Ethics of Gene Editing from an Islamic Perspective: A Focus on the Recent Gene Editing of the Chinese Twins
Measuring the psychosocial, biological, and cognitive signatures of profound stress in humanitarian settings: Impacts, challenges, and strategies in the field
Our work shows the value of rigorous research in humanitarian settings, emphasizing relevance for local communities and meaningful ways to build research ownership. Findings encourage the adoption of cognitive measures and stress biomarkers alongside self-report surveys in evaluating programme impacts. High-quality scientific research with youth can be feasible, useful, and ethical in humanitarian settings
The Increasing Prevalence of Girls in stem Education in the Arab World: What Can We Learn
There has been much scholarly research, especially in the West, exploring the underrepresentation of women and girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics ( stem ) fields. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of research on women in the Middle East, and the elements that drive them to enroll in stem are shrouded by the stereotypical image of the “oppressed Arab women.” Despite the dearth of studies, the available literature has demons…
What do we mean when we talk about gender and science? An interview with Professor Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller (MIT), author of Reflections on gender and science
I was the Rita Hauser fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2017/2018. I was there writing a book, ‘Five Scarves: Doing the impossible: If we can reverse cel
Resilience in Context: A Brief and Culturally Grounded Measure for Syrian Refugee and Jordanian Host-Community Adolescents
Validated measures are needed for assessing resilience in conflict settings. An Arabic version of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) was developed and tested in Jordan. Following qualitative work, surveys were implemented with male/female, refugee/nonrefugee samples (N = 603, 11-18 years). Confirmatory factor analyses tested three-factor structures for 28- and 12-item CYRMs and measurement equivalence across groups. CYRM-12 showed meas…
Social networks, empowerment, and wellbeing among Syrian refugee and Jordanian women: Implications for development and social inclusion
In response to large-scale refugee crises, frameworks for development assistance have promoted women’s empowerment, wellbeing, and social inclusion. A productive research agenda lies in analyzing social networks: it is unknown how women structure their social ties within refugee and host communities, and whether social networks matter for their sense of empowerment and wellbeing. In 2022, we surveyed Syrian refugee (n = 106) and Jordanian (n = 10…
Does volunteering impact refugee women's life satisfaction, empowerment, and wellbeing? Experimental evidence, local knowledge, and causal reasoning
This program evaluation integrates scientifically-rigorous and culturally-relevant methodologies to identify impacts, local knowledge systems, and causal pathways of influence. This helps clarify how and why volunteering works in real-life situations across cultural contexts, calling attention to what programs seek to achieve, how they avoid volunteer burden, and why they generate social change
Comparing online and in-person surveys: Assessing a measure of resilience with Syrian refugee youth
Humanitarian research with Syrian refugees can be difficult to conduct in-person, due to COVID-19 containment, security, and logistics issues. We assessed whether the online implementation of a brief, culturally grounded resilience measure would yield reliable responses for use with children and adolescents in the Middle East region. We implemented an online survey screening for socio-economic status, insecurity, prosocial behaviour, and resilien…
The war on the Gaza Strip and its consequences on global warming
The ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip is a deeply entrenched issue marked by repeated cycles of violence and devastation. While the immediate human toll and political implications often receive global attention, the war’s environmental impact is equally profound yet underacknowledged. Environmental destruction itself has become a weapon of war, one that not only compounds immediate human suffering but also dismantles possibilities for future liv…
The Increasing Prevalence of Girls in stem Education in the Arab World: What Can We Learn
There has been much scholarly research, especially in the West, exploring the underrepresentation of women and girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics ( stem ) fields. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of research on women in the Middle East, and the elements that drive them to enroll in stem are shrouded by the stereotypical image of the “oppressed Arab women.” Despite the dearth of studies, the available literature has demons…
Mapping the perceived impacts of a social innovation program on women’s agency and life satisfaction
Our findings suggest that We Love Reading can help change mindsets and meet a fundamental policy goal related to reading habits and knowledge empowerment in the Arab World. They show the need for mapping causal reasoning in systematic ways, taking into account different dimensions of agency in environments where social innovation can flourish
Volunteer programs, empowerment, and life satisfaction in Jordan: Mapping local knowledge and systems change to inform public policy and science diplomacy
Through visual maps and scenarios of change, the study demonstrates a participatory approach to localizing knowledge and evaluating programs. This is key to improving scientific enquiry and public policy
Coparenting, mental health, and the pursuit of dignity: A systems-level analysis of refugee father-mother narratives
Reports: Publications and Films
Melissa Fleming, A Hope More Powerful than the Sea: The Journey of Doaa Al Zamel (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017), 288 pp. Omar Dewachi, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017), xviii + 239 pp. Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, Sonita (Zurich: Xenix Film, 2015), 90 min. Ron Bourke, Terror and Hope: The Science of Resilience (Portland: Collective Eye Films, 2019), 36 min
Hypertension Risk Assessment in the Largest Ethnic Groups in Jordan
Resilience in Context: A Brief and Culturally Grounded Measure for Syrian Refugee and Jordanian Host-Community Adolescents
Validated measures are needed for assessing resilience in conflict settings. An Arabic version of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) was developed and tested in Jordan. Following qualitative work, surveys were implemented with male/female, refugee/nonrefugee samples (N = 603, 11-18 years). Confirmatory factor analyses tested three-factor structures for 28- and 12-item CYRMs and measurement equivalence across groups. CYRM-12 showed meas…
Ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes
What do we mean when we talk about gender and science? An interview with Professor Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller (MIT), author of Reflections on gender and science
I was the Rita Hauser fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2017/2018. I was there writing a book, ‘Five Scarves: Doing the impossible: If we can reverse cel
The Ethics of Gene Editing from an Islamic Perspective: A Focus on the Recent Gene Editing of the Chinese Twins
Measuring the psychosocial, biological, and cognitive signatures of profound stress in humanitarian settings: Impacts, challenges, and strategies in the field
Our work shows the value of rigorous research in humanitarian settings, emphasizing relevance for local communities and meaningful ways to build research ownership. Findings encourage the adoption of cognitive measures and stress biomarkers alongside self-report surveys in evaluating programme impacts. High-quality scientific research with youth can be feasible, useful, and ethical in humanitarian settings
The Increasing Prevalence of Girls in stem Education in the Arab World: What Can We Learn
There has been much scholarly research, especially in the West, exploring the underrepresentation of women and girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics ( stem ) fields. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of research on women in the Middle East, and the elements that drive them to enroll in stem are shrouded by the stereotypical image of the “oppressed Arab women.” Despite the dearth of studies, the available literature has demons…
Women in Science: What Are the Barriers for Women in Senior Career Positions
For several years, many governmental and non-governmental agencies, as well as researchers have made great efforts in addressing issues related to the factors that prevent women from pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers. These efforts resulted in better representation of women in these fields both in the Arab countries as well as in other developed countries. However, in these countries, women remain under-repr…
Reading for pleasure among Jordanian children: A community‐based reading intervention
Background We Love Reading (WLR) is a community‐based reading intervention aimed at cultivating an interest in reading for pleasure among children through mobilising local community members to establish informal libraries and organise read‐aloud sessions in public spaces. The programme targets primarily children between the ages 4–10 but is also open to older children. The present study investigated the effect of the WLR programme on children's p…
Adrenocortical and psychosocial responses of families in Jordan to the Covid-19 pandemic
This study of 52 predominantly lower income Jordanian and Syrian families with young children (31 girls; Mage = 53.37 months, SD = 3.53) in Jordan began in 2019, before the pandemic. Families were followed to explore stress physiology, family functioning, and mental health over the first 9 months of the pandemic. Mothers reported less adaptive coping and more negative changes to family life in June 2020 when their children had poorer behavioral s…
Reports: Publications and Films
Melissa Fleming, A Hope More Powerful than the Sea: The Journey of Doaa Al Zamel (New York: Flatiron Books, 2017), 288 pp. Omar Dewachi, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017), xviii + 239 pp. Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, Sonita (Zurich: Xenix Film, 2015), 90 min. Ron Bourke, Terror and Hope: The Science of Resilience (Portland: Collective Eye Films, 2019), 36 min
Comparing online and in-person surveys: Assessing a measure of resilience with Syrian refugee youth
Humanitarian research with Syrian refugees can be difficult to conduct in-person, due to COVID-19 containment, security, and logistics issues. We assessed whether the online implementation of a brief, culturally grounded resilience measure would yield reliable responses for use with children and adolescents in the Middle East region. We implemented an online survey screening for socio-economic status, insecurity, prosocial behaviour, and resilien…
Variability of CYP2C8 Polymorphisms in Three Jordanian Populations: Circassians, Chechens and Jordanian-Arabs
War-related trauma linked to increased sustained attention to threat in children
Experiences of war and displacement can have profound effects on children's affective development and mental health, although the mechanism(s) underlying these effects remain unknown. This study investigated the link between early adversity and attention to affective stimuli using a free-viewing eye-tracking paradigm with Syrian refugee (n = 31, Mage = 9.55, 12 female) and Jordanian non-refugee (n = 55, Mage = 9.98, 30 female) children living in …
Religion, Islam, and Compliance with Covid-19 Best Practices
Obstacles in the road of biomedical research on Covid-19 in Jordan: Poor funding and beyond
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH ON COVID-19, A BURST OF INVESTIGATIONS AND A LOT OF WASTE Since the spread of COVID-19, dedicated researchers from all over the world worked round the clock to unveil the identity of the new virus and find ways to bring the deadly pandemic to an end. Basic science virologists revealed facts about the [...]
Facial emotion recognition in refugee children with a history of war trauma
Over 36 million children are currently displaced due to war, yet we know little about how these experiences of war and displacement affect their socioemotional development-notably how they perceive facial expressions. Across three different experiments, we investigated the effects of war trauma exposure on facial emotion recognition in Syrian refugee ( n = 130, M age = 9.3 years, 63 female) and Jordanian nonrefugee children ( n = 148, M age = 9.4…
Attitudes toward dementia and cognitive aging among Syrian refugees resettled in Jordan: A qualitative study
Findings from this study are the first to examine the attitudes of Syrian refugees in Jordan toward dementia and cognitive aging. These results could provide essential data inclusive of refugees as Jordan develops its National Dementia Plan. Investing in dementia awareness interventions and age-friendly neighborhoods may benefit aging refugees in limited-resources settings
Social networks, empowerment, and wellbeing among Syrian refugee and Jordanian women: Implications for development and social inclusion
In response to large-scale refugee crises, frameworks for development assistance have promoted women’s empowerment, wellbeing, and social inclusion. A productive research agenda lies in analyzing social networks: it is unknown how women structure their social ties within refugee and host communities, and whether social networks matter for their sense of empowerment and wellbeing. In 2022, we surveyed Syrian refugee (n = 106) and Jordanian (n = 10…
Neocolonialism and science diplomacy: Lessons learned from the field and the way forward
To level the playing field in the production of global knowledge, we need to understand the practical implications of colonial heritage and how it has disproportionately affected scientific discourse and the generation and utilization of scientific knowledge from and about the Global South. This article explores how research practitioners can level the playing field. We must think about how we can collectively change the narrative so that every e…
The war on the Gaza Strip and its consequences on global warming
The ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip is a deeply entrenched issue marked by repeated cycles of violence and devastation. While the immediate human toll and political implications often receive global attention, the war’s environmental impact is equally profound yet underacknowledged. Environmental destruction itself has become a weapon of war, one that not only compounds immediate human suffering but also dismantles possibilities for future liv…
Volunteer programs, empowerment, and life satisfaction in Jordan: Mapping local knowledge and systems change to inform public policy and science diplomacy
Through visual maps and scenarios of change, the study demonstrates a participatory approach to localizing knowledge and evaluating programs. This is key to improving scientific enquiry and public policy
Exploring Factors Related to the Development and Implementation of a Local Intervention Program for Syrian Refugee Children
Many interventions have been developed to improve educational and developmental outcomes in Syrian refugee children. Here, we focus on one such intervention, We Love Reading, a community-led, shared book-reading program that was developed in Jordan by a Jordanian-run NGO. We conducted a grounded theory analysis of 21 semi-structured interviews with individuals who developed We Love Reading and/or were involved in its implementation. Participants …
Coparenting, mental health, and the pursuit of dignity: A systems-level analysis of refugee father-mother narratives
Does volunteering impact refugee women's life satisfaction, empowerment, and wellbeing? Experimental evidence, local knowledge, and causal reasoning
This program evaluation integrates scientifically-rigorous and culturally-relevant methodologies to identify impacts, local knowledge systems, and causal pathways of influence. This helps clarify how and why volunteering works in real-life situations across cultural contexts, calling attention to what programs seek to achieve, how they avoid volunteer burden, and why they generate social change
Political science (16 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (10 works) · Medicine (8 works) · Refugee (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Developmental psychology (6 works) · Public relations (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works)