Frangis Dadfar Spanta

Biography

Besides her position at BICC she is also an academic coordinator for Afghanistan at the Academy in Exile, the University of Duisburg-Essen. She coordinates a program for Afghan fellows and assists them in continuing their academic careers in Germany and internationally. She received her doctorate in political science from Freie Universität Berlin. She conducted research on Afghan elites and patrimonial networks, and worked with GIZ, the German Foreign Office, and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development on measures for good governance in Afghanistan. For the International Organization for Migration, she conducted research on the Afghan diaspora in the United States and Germany, and for GIZ she worked on a report on the Afghan-German diaspora in Germany. Her main research interest is in reconciliation and peacebuilding interventions in nation-building processes and (post-)conflict societies. Previously, she worked at the Aspen Institute Germany as a program officer for the Middle East Program and as a research associate and program coordinator in the Good Governance Afghanistan Program at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, University of Erfurt.