Victoria Brykalski

TORY BRYKALSKI, then a graduate student at University of California, Davis, California, received a grant in October 2017 to aid research in ‘Emergency Education: Syrian Schools, Hospitality, and Re-birth in Lebanon,’ supervised by Dr. Suad Joseph. This dissertation research illuminates the relationship between emergency education and Syrian society at large, focusing on the intersections between humanitarian educational models, experimental education, and practices of survival. Despite the severe restrictions Syrian educators face in Lebanon, including recent laws effectively preventing Syrian children from registering in first grade, many have welcomed the chance to experiment with new teaching styles, citing it as their ‘chance’ to undo what they call Syria’s ‘dictatorial’ education system. Through ethnographic research conducted with these educators and their students in more than 50 different classrooms in Lebanon, this project examines the function that education plays in reimagining and remaking an exilic Syrian society.