Afra Jalabi

Afra Jalabi, PhD is currently an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University in Montreal, and member of the board at the Metta Center for Nonviolence in California.

Her interests revolve around dialogue, comparative religion, and nonviolence. She has a BA in anthropology and political science from McGill University in Montreal, and a master’s degree in journalism and communication from Carleton University in Ottawa. Jalabi holds a PhD from Concordia University’s Department of Religions and Cultures.

She was a weekly columnist in the Arab press for about 20 years and produced hundreds of articles and columns and was also member of the editorial board of the Journal of Law and Religion at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Jalabi is among the first Arab women to lead a public Muslim prayer. In the last 10 years she helped develop curriculum on strategic peacebuilding, ethics of nonviolence, and conflict resolution at George Mason University and has worked with different NGOs.

She speaks several languages and has interest in both thought and action and attempts to combine them in ways that reduce conflict in the world, and more recently she has been thinking about the power of art to transform our lives and societies. She lives in Montreal with her husband, their two sons, and their cat Leo.