Dr. Albina Balidemaj is the Dean of Faculty and an Assistant Professor at RIT Kosovo and a co-founder and co-director of the RIT Kosovo Research Center for Human Rights. She is a clinical psychologist, trained in community mental health and interventions with a decade-long experience in migrant and refugee mental health, as well as human rights with a focus on acculturation, ethnic identity, and human trafficking. Dr. Balidemaj was a research affiliate at Yale University MacMillan Center for the academic year 2022-2023. At Yale, she has worked on the Impact of Intergenerational Trauma on the Mental Health of Albanian Peoples where she was working with Dr. Kaveh Khoshnood, an Associate Professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

Dr. Balidemaj holds a Ph.D. in International Community and Family Studies from Clemson University College of Behavioral, Social, and Health Sciences, an MSc in Clinical Psychology, and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Minnesota. She is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), American Orthopsychiatric Association (AOA), and the Association for Psychological Science (APS).

Dr. Balidemaj has served as a senior research reviewer for the IAFOR Research Centre at Osaka University in Tokyo, Japan; Journal of Comparative Migration Studies, Violence and Victims, Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care and she’s also been recognized by the American Journal of Public Health in 2018. Her latest research has been presented at the European Congress of Psychology in Moscow. Outside of academia, Dr. Balidemaj has served as a local and international consultant for several organizations.

Dr. Balidemaj’s research interests include 1) refugee and migrant mental health, 2) human rights, and 3) public and global health. Her projects are primarily in the Balkans, the EU, and the United States. Her work has been published by international publishers like Elsevier, Routledge, and SAGE.