Brunilda Pali

Born in Albania in 1979, Brunilda came of age during the regime change from an isolated dictatorship towards democracy. She left her country during the 1997 civil war towards Istanbul, to conduct her studies. She followed an interdisciplinary academic path: Psychology at the Bosphorus University (Turkey), Gender Studies at the Central European University (Hungary), and Cultural Studies at Bilgi University (Turkey).

After her studies, in 2004 she returned to Tirana where she worked at the Albanian Foundation for Conflict Resolution, and held a lecturing position at the University of New York in Tirana. Determined to learn more about alternative approaches to crime and conflict, Brunilda moved to Belgium and started working at the EFRJ and Leuven Institute of Criminology, KU Leuven in 2008 under the mentorship of Prof. Ivo Aertsen on several projects in the field of restorative justice. In 2016 she completed her PhD research in Criminology at KU Leuven in the framework of the FP7 project ALTERNATIVE on the potential and the limits of restorative justice for justice and security in intercultural contexts. In 2018, she was granted a postdoctoral fellowship by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) to conduct a systematic and critical investigation of the role, place and potential of restorative justice in the European penal systems and policies. During 2021 she also held a lecturing position at the University of Amsterdam Department of Political Sciences.

Currently Brunilda has joined the Social and Anthropology Department of KU Leuven to work in the BELSPO-funded project REGUIDE, an interdisciplinary research project on the reintegration of Belgian returnees from Syria/Iraq and their families in society. In Leuven, she is also deeply involved with the Center for Ethics, Religion, and Detention (CRED) in developing co-learning initiatives in closed-off institutions, such as prisons, and with the Leuven Restorative City, of which she is a founding member. She is also Visiting Professor at Vermont Law School (USA), where she teaches on Environmental Restorative Justice. Brunilda publishes extensively and has co-edited Critical Restorative Justice (2017); Restoring Justice and Security in Intercultural Europe (2018); and The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Restorative Justice (2022). Since 2016 she has been elected Board Member and Secretary of the European Forum for Restorative Justice.

I have been an active and committed member of the EFRJ throughout the years from multiple and complementary perspectives and positions: as an admirer, as a member, as an employee, and as a Board Member. My commitment to the EFRJ is at the same time intellectual, practical, and affective. I have witnessed the EFRJ in the last two decades grow, struggle, flourish, and l have grown, struggled and flourished with it. I am convinced that I can continue to positively contribute to the EFRJ by continuing to be a Board Member thanks in particular to some of my assets, in particular: a) my existing experience and skills acquired during my first mandate as a Board Member and my proximity to the Secretariat; b) my international and interdisciplinary background and profile; c) my research, writing, teaching and fundraising skills and creative, critical and innovative thinking abilities; d) my extended networks throughout different countries and sectors, and; e) my work ethics and commitment to the EFRJ’s membership, Secretariat, and most importantly to restorative justice and alternative approaches to punishment which go beyond imprisonment and state perpetration of violence, approaches that are more in line with human rights and democracy. I believe that the combination of these qualities can help me to push forward the work of the Board of the EFRJ and to ensure that the EFRJ makes the difference in Europe and beyond, and I would be grateful and humbled if members would entrust me with this task and give me this opportunity, once again.

There is essentially one main reason why I propose Brunilda Pali as a Board member of the EFRJ, and this is the following: Quite apart from her outstanding merits as a scientist, the impressive list of publications and her extensive experience in academic teaching and as a speaker at many international conferences, seminars, and workshops, I strongly want her to be able to continue her work for the EFRJ.

She has in the course of the last years reached out to many young colleagues, has shaped alliances and built teams that tread new paths in the field of restorative justice. She has initiated new projects and new activities regarding the dissemination of the idea of restorative justice. There is no end yet to be seen and her strength and imagination are needed to follow through with what she has started and to keep on doing and thinking more in the way of opening further new paths to make the idea and the practice of restorative justice come true.

Brunilda is one of the leading and most promising scholars in the field of restorative justice. Her perspective combines extensive studies and practice, relevant publications, and the coordination of important international projects and other initiatives. She is a bright and incredibly inspiring person and scholar. Her talent derives from her unique capacity to ‘reconcile’ her intellectual honesty and rigour with her incredible creativity, artistic nature, empathic soul. Her studies and commitment cover a wide range of topics: from intercultural studies to victims’ rights, from sociological and psychological studies on security to arts and environmental justice. Her work is driven by the pressure of questions: not academic speculations, but fundamental human questions (Why all this suffering? Why discrimination? Why violence? Why domination?). The pressure of these questions disclose an urgency for action in the fields of both research and practice. Thanks to her belonging to many different places and cultures (Albania, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, UK and others), Brunilda integrates, even in her personal life, a fascinating intercultural setting where a dialogue between North and South, East and West is incessant. The vulnerable ones – minorities, migrants, victims, those who are excluded and rejected – are at the very centre of Brunilda’s scholarly and social engagement. There is something very ‘political’ – in the noblest sense of the term ‘political’ – in her engagement as a scholar and a practitioner. This is reflected also in the great contribution Brunilda has given to the EFRJ Board during her first mandate: it is not by chance that the EFRJ has been engaged extensively, for instance, in policy work, environmental restorative justice, restorative justice and the arts. Brunilda has taken Howard Zehr’s instruction ‘to change lenses’ so seriously, that she has become herself the new lens through which we can now ‘expand’ our imagination about restorative justice (but actually about justice tout court), as mentioned in the very title of the 2018 unforgettable EFRJ International Conference in Tirana, Albania, that Bruna beautifully contributed to design and organise in her own homeland. I strongly support Brunilda’s second mandate as a EFRJ Board member to allow this rich heritage to be carried on and further developed.

Email: brunilda.pali@kuleuven.be

Organisation, job title: KU Leuven, Senior Researcher