Alexandra (Alex) Dingle grew up in New York City, where she was constantly surrounded by people from all over the world. Her upbringing, alongside visiting her family in Greece every summer, piqued her global engagement and desire to listen to different stories and hear about backgrounds. Wanting to immerse herself somewhere on the ground after graduating high school, Alex became the sole fellow on the Tufts 1+4 Bridge Year program to go to Pune, India with Global Citizen Year. There, she learned about the power of education firsthand by working in a government school with Teach for India. Her experience inspired her to work in the Eleonas refugee camp in Athens, Greece during the summer of 2020. While she was organizing activities for young children from many different countries, she understood the power of play in social cohesion efforts.

Upon arrival to Tufts in the fall of 2020, Alex decided to pursue her majors in International Relations (Identity) concentration and Middle Eastern Studies with minors in Arabic and Child Study and Human Development. She wanted to take her experiences to the classroom and build on skills to bring back to the ground. During her time at Tufts, Alex was heavily involved with the Middle East Research Group and other programs through Tisch College. She was also accepted into the Laidlaw Research and Leadership Program to pursue research on children’s play in refugee camps in Greece, which led her to spend a summer working with UNICEF, and the work culminated in her senior honors thesis. Wanting to immerse herself and learn from people in community firsthand, Alex spent a year studying abroad in Amman, Jordan with SIT: Refugees, Health, and Humanitarian Action and the Middlebury School in Jordan. Her time there was transformative and further pushed her to reconsider traditional protection and education structures upon her return to Tufts.

After graduation, Alex is excited to work with Parami University as a Program Progression Adviser and learn directly from her students and new community. She hopes to continue understanding different approaches to education in challenging situations and to support her students to develop into change-makers for their community. She is eager to better delve into understanding causes for transnational migration and engage in cross-cultural immersion.