Biography
I believe when people feel seen and heard, they cooperate. In research and development, this manifests in increasing the chances of an intervention, program or policy succeeding, or in allowing us, researchers, to truthfully know a bit more about their lives. And so, investing upfront in learning from the people we are targeting and their environments always pays off.
I also believe in empowering people, rather than helping them – to the extent possible. For me, empowerment is connected to sustainability and cutting, rather than creating, a dependency cycle on a certain benefit or development program. Unlike help, which also has a sense of control embedded inherently in the act.
In graduate school, I was inspired by academics who believed that knowledge, and especially that which aims at understanding human behavior, is not solely generated through the research that we do, it is co-generated through interacting with the context and listening to the people for whom we do the research, and that it is a privilege to be able to seek answers without having a clock ticking to release a policy that would affect the lives of thousands or millions of people. Therefore, it is our responsibility as researchers to understand really well and then share what we learn.
That is why my passion lies at the intersection of behavioral and experimental economics, behavioral science, and development.
As the Director of Behavioral Research and Academic Engagements (BRACE) at Busara, I lead a wonderful team of researchers who advance behavioral science by partnering with academics to produce contextualized cutting-edge rigorous research, test interventions, and co-produce knowledge about human behavior under poverty conditions in the Global South, and apply behavioral science by partnering with Busara’s advisory teams to integrate accumulated research knowledge and tools into sector-specific projects with various organizations.
We listen and keep an eye on the most pressing issues in the context we operate in, we conduct research that is inspired by relevant problems and we share and package the findings to contribute to problem solving.
Languages: Arabic, English, French