Amal Mohammed Hassan Jamal received her doctorate in Cultural Landscape program of the School of Architecture at McGill University in 2009. She had previously completed a Master in Urban Planning from School of Urban planning at McGill in 1999.  Jamal won the Libyan Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research award for postgraduate studies in 1995 and 2002.

Jamal has worked on landscape and urban designs projects in Libya and has held senior academic and administrative positions in Garyounis University (now Benghazi University), Al-Arab Medical University, Africa National University, and in Benghazi municipal planning office. In 2000, she was one of the founders and first teaching staff of the faculty of Architecture in Africa National University. Since 2000, Jamal has been teaching in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning in the Faculty of Engineering at Garyounis University. The main courses Amal has taught was history of housing, history of architecture, history of urban planning, landscape architecture, design studio, and visual art. She has been elected to be the director of this department in the period from 2001 to 2003.

Jamal’s doctoral and recent research records and interprets the material culture of the indigenous Kel Azjer Tuareg of Libya. Her doctoral research is the first study to provide analytical documentation of the urban form and architecture of the Old Town of Ghat, the historical sultanate of the Kel Azjer Tuareg, and to portray the evolution of Ghat’s built form from the time of its founding in the 17th century until its total abandonment in the early 1980s. Her study illustrates how Ghat’s vernacular architecture represents a range of culturally distinct meanings and values and how this architecture reflects Ghatian identity and life.  Her study presents also the first documentation of the nomadic and semi-nomadic dwelling typology of the Azjer Tuareg in Libya. Her research provides material that will encourage Libyan officials and UNESCO to safeguard this heritage from the ravages of a modernizing Libya.

Jamal participated in several professional activities, including the Gender, Material Culture & Culture of Diplomacy Conference, University of  Toronto, St George Campus, Canada, October 7-9,2010; Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq: Policies, programs and projects, College of Public and Community Service, University of Massachusetts, Boston, July 23-26, 2007;  and in a global three-city project Making the Edible Landscape, a minimum cost housing development project, McGill University, September 2004-April 2005.

Jamal has several research works in progress and under publications that investigate and interpret the socio-economic cultural aspects of the Kel Azjer Tuareg of Libya and their built heritage. Her recent publication documents the “Esthetic Elements in the Domestic Spaces of the Old Town of Ghat,” The Journal for African Culture and New Approaches, Fall 2010.