Ms. Tiffany Tryon

Teachers College Columbia University

Bio

Ms. Tiffany Tryon is a doctoral candidate in International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her work spans education in emergencies, forced displacement, political and social identity, and the relationship between education and conflict. She has worked across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Her current research examines how internally displaced adolescents in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq experience education and understand its place in their lives.

Stories of Self: Education and Identity Narration Among Internally Displaced Adolescents in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Abstract

More than a decade after the conflict with Daesh, thousands of adolescents remain in prolonged displacement in Iraq. Drawing on narrative interviews and life-journey mapping with adolescents aged 14 to 17 across four IDP camps in the Kurdistan Region, this paper examines education within lives shaped by responsibilities, relationships, and interests. It argues that educational trajectories cannot be understood through institutional progression alone, as continuity and interruption shape educational meaning and adolescents’ understandings of themselves.