I currently work as a researcher at the Centre for Lebanese Studies (CLS) at the Lebanese American University (LAU). I hold an MA in Educational Psychology from the American University of Beirut (AUB). My main areas of research focus on identifying methods that explore skills of youth and children in disadvantaged contexts. In the AY 2020-2021, I will start my PhD in Education, Practice and Society in the Institute of Education at University College London (UCL). My dissertation focuses on designing a tool that explores the street-smart skills of street children and accordingly understand how to translate these skills to meaningful learning outcomes across different trajectories. Aside from research, I am passionate about travelling, music, and doing different types of sports.
CLS partners LERRN in research projects to mobilize understanding and boost civil responses to refugee crisis. As part of this collaboration, LERRN recruited three graduate students from McGill and Carleton Universities for a six-week research experience in Lebanon and Jordan. I was pleased to support one of the placed graduate students who focused on a research on “Education to Employment” in Summer 2019. Moreover, as part of our collaboration with LERRN as well, I was offered the opportunity to attend a training on Regional and Forced Migration, “The Meaning of Asylum in Transient Contexts of East and Horn of Africa”, organized by the Peace Institute at Moi University in Nairobi, Kenya during August 2019. The training was a week-long intensive introduction to refugee and forced displacement issues. It selected a group of scholars, practitioners and policymakers from Kenya, along with representatives of LERRN’s Working Groups in Tanzania, Lebanon and Jordan and other LERRN partners.
My experience with LERRN indeed had great value on different levels. Firstly, hosting the graduate student from Carleton University was an opportunity to engage her – as a scholar from the Global North – in the context of the crisis. Moreover, the training helped me explore different approaches to refugee protection, explore policy implementation, reflect on the roles of local actors in refugee protection, understand the dynamics of forced displacement in Africa and explore refugee experiences. It was an exceptional opportunity by LERRN, as it has gathered civil society actors from major refugee-hosting states in the global South to share experiences.