Alma Vardari is a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, conducting research on the topic of EU statebuilding in the Western Balkans. She received her PhD in Sociology from Tel-Aviv University and her MA in Behavioral Sciences from Ben-Gurion University, majoring in Political Sociology. She is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University. During her academic life she has been awarded a number of distinguished international awards and research grants, including: The Robert Schuman Doctoral Research Grant (2010), the Konrad Adenauer Doctoral Fellowship (2011), the Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship spent at the Global Studies Division, Stanford University (2014- 2015), and the Humboldt Fellowship (2016).