Safa'A Abujarour

As a motivated researcher in the area of Social Networks and IT Usage and Socialization, Safa’a AbuJarour has started her PhD studies with Prof. Hanna Krasnova at the chair of Business and Public Sector Information at the University of Potsdam since January 2016, and has started her role as a Research Associate at the same chair since March 2016. Before moving to the University of Potsdam, Safa’a has spent two year, 2014-2016, as a Research Associate at the ESCP Europe Business School in Berlin in the context of the EU Project: Open Educational Ideas and Innovation www.idea-space.eu. Together with the international project team, she dealt with new practices, services and learning technologies for Open Education. Safa’a AbuJarour obtained her Master’s degree from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2012. In the context of her Master's Thesis about “Investigating the Usage of Facebook by Arab People”, she investigated the use of Facebook by Arab people and compared the results with the results of prior similar studies done for Germany and USA by her supervisors: Prof. Oliver Günther and Dr. Hanna Krasnova. Safa’a journey started at the Arab American University in Jenin – Palestine, where she received her B.Sc. in the major of Management Information Systems in 2005. During her Master’s studies, she enriched her professional experience, where she worked as a Support Engineer at Meltwater News and as a Research Lab Manager at the ESMT - European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. In her latter role, she was responsible, in the period 2010-2012, for managing the activities in the research lab, where they run studies focusing on the areas of leadership, social responsibility, European competitiveness, and technology management.

In her current research topic on “The Role of Technology in Alleviating the Current Refugees’ Crisis”, she has been applying scientific research methods to the use of Social Networks by the refugees in Germany and how they use IT to survive their dangerous and long journey to Europe, in addition to increase their chances of getting integrated into the new society. In particular, her research evolves around the use of smartphones and Social Networks by refugees with the goal of utilizing them to get them integrated into the new hosting societies.

During her voluntary engagement with the refugees in Berlin, she created a Facebook group and then a website, place4refugees.de, that serves the needs of the volunteers and the refugees. During the previous months, she has been gathering many insights about how the refugees use their smartphones and Social Networks to deal with the new situation in Germany using qualitative research methods.

Safa’a believes that IT can play a crucial role in the integration process of the refugees, and she believes that the value of science and research is tackling current issues and coming up with innovative solutions to them following scientific methods. And this fits exactly to her background as a member of the German society with immigration background, who would like to bridge the gap between the two cultures and to employ research to come up with a scientific approach to interconnect the newcomers and German society and support the integration process.