* The SOP is meant to a stream of text without sectional headings, but here in the interest of understanding, we are highlighting the various sections.

I was sixteen when I first visited the Zaatari refugee camp near the Syrian border. My father, a doctor volunteering with Médecins Sans Frontières, allowed me to accompany him during a medical outreach program. What struck me most were not the tents, the clinics, or even the visible wounds—but the children who could no longer recall what they had left behind. Their fragmented memories, confused timelines, and stilted expressions of identity stayed with me. That experience shaped not only my academic journey but my life’s purpose: to understand how trauma reshapes memory, especially in children, and to help develop therapeutic frameworks rooted in neuroscience and empathy.

This mission has led me to apply for a PhD in Psychology at McGill University. I believe McGill’s world-class research in neuropsychology, particularly the work of Dr. Jens Pruessner on memory and stress, aligns seamlessly with my academic training and long-term aspirations.

My foundational understanding of human psychology was formed during my BA at the American University of Beirut, where I graduated with honors. During my undergraduate years, I became involved in a project studying PTSD prevalence among Lebanese civil war survivors, which exposed me to the deep intersection between memory, emotion, and cultural context. It also taught me the importance of methodological rigor and ethical nuance, especially when dealing with vulnerable populations.

Eager to pursue this field more formally, I moved to the Netherlands to complete my MA in Clinical Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. My thesis explored how repeated trauma in adolescence affects working memory and executive functioning. Using fMRI data and behavioral tests, we found preliminary evidence that trauma-exposed youth demonstrated heightened amygdala activation during memory recall tasks. This work was later published as a co-authored paper in the Journal of Traumatic Stress (2023), and presented at the European Conference on Developmental Psychology.

Beyond academia, I have consistently worked in real-world clinical settings. At the UNHCR’s Trauma Recovery Unit, I assisted in designing psychosocial interventions for displaced adolescents and co-facilitated resilience-building workshops in Jordanian refugee camps. My internship at Al-Salt Mental Health Hospital further grounded me in the realities of clinical diagnosis, intake assessments, and therapeutic techniques in high-pressure environments. These roles not only sharpened my applied skills but reinforced my resolve to base interventions on robust, empirical research.

McGill University is my top choice for doctoral studies because of its rich tradition of neuroscience-integrated psychology and its commitment to global mental health. I am particularly drawn to the Memory Lab led by Dr. Pruessner, whose research on hippocampal atrophy and cortisol response in trauma-exposed individuals aligns perfectly with my interests. I am also eager to engage with the McGill Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, where I hope to contribute to cross-linguistic studies on trauma narratives and memory encoding.

What distinguishes me as a candidate is my intersectional experience across theory, research, and practice. I have lived, studied, and worked in regions where trauma is not a clinical abstraction but a lived daily reality. I bring cultural fluency, linguistic flexibility (Arabic, English, Dutch), and a profound respect for the ethical implications of memory research in fragile contexts. My long-term goal is to lead a research lab in the Middle East focused on adolescent trauma recovery, bridging Western neuroscience with indigenous therapeutic frameworks.

I see the PhD program at McGill not just as a degree, but as a deep partnership in knowledge creation. I hope to co-author impactful research, mentor undergraduate students, and eventually contribute to international trauma recovery policy. My journey began in a refugee camp, but it continues in the lab, where I seek to answer a single question: how do we help young minds heal from what they can’t remember?