Venera Demukaj

Venera Demukaj is an Assistant Professor at RIT Kosovo (A.U.K). She teaches Development Economics, Natural Resource Economics, Environmental Economics and International Trade and Finance.  She also supervises RIT Kosovo (A.U.K) Honors’ Society projects. Previously she has worked at the University of Prishtina and Institute for Development Research Riinvest. Venera received her Ph.D. from the School of International Studies, University of Trento (Italy), with a dissertation on ‘Aid Effectiveness in Post-Conflict Countries’. During her Ph.D. research, Venera has spent three months as an intern at UNU-WIDER in Helsinki. In 2015 Venera was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and spent four months as a visiting scholar at West Virginia University. Venera has also been involved in several national and regional projects as a team leader or principal investigator such as UNDP project on  ‘Second Millennium Development Report for Kosovo’ (2007); Regional Research Promotion Project (RRPP) on ‘Education Specific Corruption in Western Balkan’ (2012-2013); USAID BEEP/Balkan Trust for Democracy Project on Economic Development and Political Transition in Kosovo (2012-2013).  In 2016, Venera was awarded the first Prize for the Best Paper Competition (co-authored with Luca J. Uberti). The competition was launched by the Research Unit of South Eastern Europe at the London School of Economics (LSE) supported by the Secretariat and the CEFTA Chair Office. Venera also serves as member of the Advisory Board of the GAP Institute in Prishtina. Her main research interests are post-conflict transitions; foreign aid; poverty reduction; and women empowerment.