Resilience Schemas Among 
Arab & Middle Eastern Populations

In partnership with the Center for Arab & Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at the American University of Beirut (AUB), my dissertation investigates how Lebanese emerging adults define, perceive, and practice resilience amid chronic instability .

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My dissertation examines how emerging adults in Beirut, Lebanon understand and practice resilience within conditions of ongoing sociopolitical and economic crisis. This project seeks to develop a culturally grounded framework, the Lebanese Resilience Schema, that reflects local meaning-making rather than Western-centered definitions. Supported by the Doctoral Evidence Acquisition (DEA) Fellowship at Florida International University, this research is conducted in formal partnership with the Center for Arab & Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at the American University of Beirut. Through this affiliation, I carry out community-based qualitative fieldwork in Beirut, collaborating with regional scholars and training Lebanese undergraduate research assistants in interviewing, research ethics, and qualitative analysis.

This fieldwork also represents the qualitative phase of a sequential mixed-methods dissertation. Insights generated in Beirut directly inform a later quantitative study that examines how endorsement of dominant resilience narratives varies across intersecting identity factors such as gender, sectarian affiliation, and generational cohort within Lebanon. Together with a preceding critical narrative review, these 3 studies work in sequence to theorize and empirically examine resilience as it is constructed, understood, and negotiated among Lebanese citizens. By centering local epistemologies and lived experience, this project contributes to a more culturally grounded and regionally responsive psychological science.

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This line of research also meaningfully connects to my work on cultural appropriation. Exploring how cultural schemas and narratives are mobilized, distorted, or weaponized across political and institutional contexts provides important insight into the forces that construct, sustain, and reshape the narratives surrounding Lebanese resilience. Understanding these dynamics helps contextualize how cultural meanings are co-opted in ways that reinforce inequality, shape public perceptions, and constrain collective identity.