Building toward hope

When you work at an organization called Beyond Conflict, you think about how people can move past the violence, trauma, and destruction that comes from global conflict. You think of the violent perpetrators, the refugees, and how reconciliation can emerge from a tragic situation.

Bilal Hindi, ’20, considers these questions in his work with Beyond Conflict, an organization dedicated to global conflict resolution through psychological understanding. As a member of its trauma and violent conflict team, he researches violent extremism and its causes. Hindi also finds answers in work on the ground helping refugees. As someone from Lebanon, where some of the clients come from, he says his job is both important and personal.

“There needs to be an understanding of political, economic, [and] geographical differences between people to understand their behavior or the drivers of their behavior,” Hindi says.

Hindi’s role in Beyond Conflict reflects an interest he carried in his undergraduate years. He chose jobs in the offices of admissions and international education that put him in people-centered roles. His desire to integrate social sciences and policy with hard science led to studying psychology and health care with a concentration in neuroscience.

Hindi’s honors thesis focused on cognitive flexibility and resilience in one of the cleverest mammals: raccoons. By analyzing their fecal samples, he discovered hormonal evidence of emotional resilience and reduced stress as the raccoons adapted to changes. Years later, Hindi’s thesis informs how he thinks about the resilience he sees in the people he works with every day. He hopes to continue exploring it with a doctoral program focusing on migration and displacement psychology.

“It’s not enough to just know the science,” he says. “It’s also important to apply it to humans.”