Senior Research Coordinator

Abiraahmi Shankar is a Senior Research Coordinator at NYU’s ARCADIA Lab for Suicide Prevention, where she leads project management throughout the research lifecycle. Currently, she works on the Directing Change project, conducting qualitative research and overseeing quantitative data collection. Prior to this, she was an Associate Research Scientist at NYU Global TIES for Children, where she supported the implementation of mixed-methods research, the development of gamified, user-centric research and learning products, and project management for the Gobee, Education Cannot Wait and INEE Measurement Library projects across several LMICs, including Lebanon, Jordan, Peru, and Colombia. Abiraahmi holds a MSc. in Integrated Design & Media from NYU's Tandon School of Engineering, where she explored the role of emerging technology in building sustainable education systems in the socio-cultural contexts in which media is developed by and in. She also received a BSc. in Applied Psychology from NYU Steinhardt, during which time she completed her honors thesis on the Contribution of Social and Emotional Learning to Changes in Syrian Refugee Students’ Academic Outcomes.

Featured Works

  • Morris-Perez, P., Shankar, A., Abenavoli, R., Sczersputowski, J., Saragosa-Harris, D., Benzekri, A.,  Collins, S., Canizares, C., Russell, S., & Alvarez, K. (2025). How does suicide prevention in the form of a film contest affect youth and schools? A qualitative study of the mechanisms of Directing Change. School Mental Health. Manuscript submitted for publication.

  • Tubbs Dolan, Carly; Shankar, Abiraahmi; Caires, Roxane; Aber, J. Lawrence; Yoshikawa, Hirokazu; Kim, Ha Yeon; et al. (2024). Supporting Children’s Holistic Development in Contexts of Conflict and Crisis: Lessons from a decade of striving towards research that is effective, equitable and sustainable. figshare. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26261534.v2 

  • Brown, L., Shankar, A., Al-Amoudi, H., Boulegroun, K., Caires, R., Mansour, H., & Al-Hmoud, H. (2024). If you build it, will they come?  Enablers and constraints of the adoption of  a gamified holistic learning application. [Conference session]. Comparative and International Education Society, Miami, Florida, United States. https://pulte.nd.edu/events/cies2024/ 

  • Shankar, Abiraahmi; Caires, Roxane; Brown, Lindsay; Boulares, Douha; Boulegroun, Kahina (2023). EdTech in Low-Resource Settings: Challenges, opportunities, and conditions for success. figshare. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24560167.v1

  • Gumisiriza, M., Tubbs, C., Shankar, A., & Seminario, E. Communities are the Experts: Testing a Measure of Organizational Capacity for Community-based Problem-solving (Org-CapCPS): Psychometric Evidence from East Africa.

  • Freel, Samuel; Tubbs Dolan, Carly; Caires, Roxane; Shankar, Abiraahmi (2023). Thinking outside the classroom: Theories of change and measures to support the design, monitoring, and evaluation of distance learning programs. figshare. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22047899.v1

  • Shankar, A. (2021, April 29). The Contribution of Social & Emotional Skills and Behavior to Changes in Syrian Refugees’ Academic Outcomes. Retrieved from osf.io/uywq9

  • Steinhardt Research  Conference: Teachers’ Perceptions of Refugee Students’ Social and Emotional Competencies and Academic Outcomes. https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/rss2021-presenter3/home