Hometown: I am from nowhere, somewhere, and everywhere.

Research interests: Writing and Poetry. Socio-political and gender dynamics. Development and post conflict resolutions. Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Emergencies. Social Impact. Nationalism and Identity Formation. Trauma and Violence Extremism. Peace building and social cohesion.

Shano graduated from the University of Kirkuk in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Following graduation in January 2016, Shano joined the UN Migration Agency (IOM) - Iraq Mission where she diligently served communities affected by ISIL across Iraq through UN for over 6 years. Through her work with UN, Shano was able to put her experiences as part of a family affected by conflict into context, advocate for solutions that consider both logic and humanity, design and implement programs. During her work with IOM Iraq, she was able to grow professionally starting as a Field Researcher to a Research Coordinator. In her role with IOM, Shano worked on research projects using various methodologies focused on topics including migration, durable solutions, youth and women’s empowerment, displacement, integration and stabilization, and security and ethnic tensions. Having worked with research teams from universities such as Georgetown and Yale on longitudinal studies helped fuel her ever-growing interest in the humanities field, in particular, evidence-based approaches to problems like those that affected her during her formative years. In the MAAS program, Shano attempts to gain the tools to cultivate a better understanding of identifying culturally adequate solutions to gender inequality and injustice in the Arab world in the context of war. In the course of her study at GU, she hopes to contribute positively to the capacity in the region to deal with the aftermath of the many wars and to contribute to a transformation to peace, inclusions, and stability while taking responsibility of representing women of her country. She hopes to be able to engage individuals as part of the solution, move away from the victim-perpetrator dyad and find ways to engage all genders and ethnicities in seeing past the circumstances that society imposes on them.