Diana Ishaqat

Human & Civil Rights Briefings | European Commission, EU Delegation in Jordan & Others

Jordan & Brussels | 2018 – Present

Since 2018, I have been periodically selected to brief policymakers, diplomats, and institutional stakeholders at events organized by the European Commission, the EU Delegation in Jordan, and other international bodies on the lived realities of communities whose struggles rarely make it into formal policy conversations.

The briefings have focused on three interconnected areas where advocacy remains critically underfunded and misunderstood: the status of women navigating economic exclusion and honor-based violence in contexts where cultural norms and legal frameworks often fail to protect them; the situation of refugees — particularly those rendered invisible by the absence of legal documentation, which locks them out of education, healthcare, employment, and legal recourse; and the experiences of young people facing compounding marginalization at the intersection of poverty, statelessness, and social stigma.

Being invited into these spaces is not something I take lightly. These briefings are an opportunity to ensure that the data and policy discussions happening at the institutional level are anchored in the complexity of what is actually happening on the ground — and that the people most affected by these decisions are at least present in the room, even if only through the words of someone who has worked alongside them.

Social Media and Social Change in Jordan | Routledge / Toda Peace Institute

London & San Diego | 2018–2021

I researched how Jordanians use mainstream social media platforms to navigate humanitarian, economic, and political crises — and what this reveals about opportunities for social transformation and civil society programming.

The work began with a policy paper commissioned by the Toda Peace Institute in 2018, whose findings I presented at the Build Peace 2019 conference at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego — one of the leading international gatherings on technology, media, and peacebuilding.

The research was later developed into a book chapter published in Social Media Impacts on Conflict and Democracy (Routledge, 2021), examining how platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become critical spaces for public debate, identity negotiation, and socio-political change in Jordan — while also surfacing the gaps and risks that organisations working with disadvantaged communities and refugees must reckon with.

Published in: Social Media Impacts on Conflict and Democracy, ed. Lisa Schirch, Routledge Affiliated with: Toda Peace Institute

Disability Rights Ecosystem Mapping | Centre for Lebanese Studies & Education Development Centre

Jordan & Palestine | 2023

As part of a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-funded initiative under the Disability Under Siege programme, I mapped disability rights ecosystems and advocacy networks across Jordan and Palestine, contributing to one of the first empirically grounded efforts to document deinstitutionalisation of persons with disabilities in the Middle East.

The project brought together a network of UK- and MENA-based universities and researchers to address a critical gap: the near-total absence of regional research on how institutionalisation affects children with disabilities' access to education — particularly in contexts of conflict and occupation.

My work produced strategic insights that informed research agendas and programming across the network, and contributed to a broader mapping report identifying key local, regional, and international organisations working on deinstitutionalisation — laying the groundwork for South-South and North-South partnerships in the field.

Partners: Centre for Lebanese Studies, Education Development Center, Disability Under Siege Funded by: UKRI, Open Society Foundation

Career & Education Blog Series | For9a × Deutsche Welle

Jordan & MENA Region | Online

For9a — Arabic for "opportunity" — is one of the Arab world's leading platforms for career development and employment, connecting millions of young job-seekers across the MENA region with opportunities, guidance, and resources in both Arabic and English. In partnership with Deutsche Welle, the internationally renowned German public broadcaster with a strong Arabic-language presence across the region, I contributed a series of career and education blogs targeting young Arab professionals navigating an often opaque landscape of opportunity.

The series covered practical, high-demand topics: how to write competitive job applications, identify scholarships and funding opportunities, decode the often confusing terminology that appears in international application forms, and understand the differences between key concepts that frequently get lost in translation between Arabic and English. Drawing on my own experience as a Chevening and Schwarzman Scholar, as well as years of working across international development and civil society, the pieces were written to be genuinely useful — grounded, accessible, and bilingual in their framing — for readers who are ambitious but may lack access to the kind of insider knowledge that makes these processes less intimidating.