Omar Al Jamal

Omar is the Program Coordinator for the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute. He earned a Master’s Degree in Romance Languages and Literatures from Notre Dame, where he researched social movements, protest art, trauma, state terror, and re-democratization in the Southern Cone. At Notre Dame, he earned prestigious research grants to conduct fieldwork in Chile, interviewing the founding members of the influential Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA), as well as key figures in the 1988 Chilean national plebiscite, and he wrote his master's thesis on the (protest) art actions of CADA in the context of the Chilean dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet.

After graduating, he spent time traveling and working in Brazil, taught Spanish as a foreign language and world literature at Saint Mary's College and Holy Cross College, respectively, and began developing a career in commercial and academic translation, writing, editing, and educational and nonprofit consulting. In 2016, he was Program Coordinator at Vanderbilt University's Department of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, supporting the work of Vice Chancellor George C. Hill and leading efforts to support the international and interfaith communities there before relocating to Northeastern Brazil, where he lived until 2022. As a professional translator, copyeditor, copywriter, and indexer, he has worked in advertising and branding and, primarily, with international scholars and political scientists, academic journals, such as Opinião Pública (UNICAMP), and publishers, such as University Press of Florida.

From 2017 to 2020, he supported the Kroc Institute's Peace Accords Matrix Barometer Initiative as a freelance translator. Today, he has rejoined the PAM team to advance his career in academic administration and promote the important work underway at the Kroc Institute and in Colombia to monitor the implementation of the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement.