UEA Refugee Week

Keynote Speaker: Dr Ahmad Akhad

Title: Gateways or Gatekeepers? Reimagining Sanctuary and Inclusion for Displaced and At-Risk Scholars in Higher Education

Abstract:

In an era marked by rising geopolitical tensions, restrictive immigration policies, and increasing displacement worldwide, higher education institutions face critical questions about their roles as potential sanctuaries. Are universities acting as gateways—opening inclusive pathways for displaced scholars—or as gatekeepers, unintentionally limiting opportunities for genuine academic integration?

Drawing upon research into the lived experiences of Syrian scholars displaced by conflict, as well as ongoing research exploring academic inclusion and institutional responses for other displaced and at-risk scholars in the UK, this keynote critically examines existing inclusion practices within higher education. It highlights the profound personal and professional challenges faced by displaced academics—including experiences of ‘academic poverty’ and ‘academic death’, identity struggles, and professional precariousness—while also emphasising their remarkable resilience and contributions to academic communities through ‘academic re-existence’

This presentation argues that genuine sanctuary within academia requires more than symbolic support; it demands structural, sustainable, and transformative inclusion practices. To this end, it introduces the ‘RIELS’ framework—Recognition, Inclusion, Equity, Leadership, and Sustainability—as a practical tool for creating genuinely inclusive academic institutions and cultures for displaced and at-risk scholars. By integrating these scholars' lived experiences into research, teaching, and policy-making, universities can foster dynamic environments that not only protect but actively empower displaced academics as essential contributors to institutional growth and global scholarship.

Ultimately, the presentation offers a vision for international solidarity and collaboration, calling upon higher education stakeholders to critically reassess and reimagine their approaches to sanctuary and inclusion. Faculty members, administrators, researchers, students, and other higher education stakeholders attending this keynote will be encouraged to reflect on their roles in fostering inclusive academic communities, ensuring that displaced scholars’ voices are not merely heard, but actively shape the future of higher education.

Bio:

Dr Ahmad Akkad is a Researcher and an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, where he leads the Middle East and North Africa strand of the International Student Mobility and World Development project. He is also the Principal Investigator of a research project examining academic inclusion for at-risk and displaced scholars in UK higher education. Ahmad serves as a College Advisor at Blackfriars College, University of Oxford, is an Editorial Board member of Higher Education Quarterly, and Co-Convenor of the Diary Method Community.

Ahmad completed his PhD at the University of Warwick, where his longitudinal research explored the lived experiences of displaced Syrian academics, theorising their contributions to higher education reconstruction and the recovery-development nexus in Syria. His research spans international higher education, education in conflict and recovery contexts, doctoral education, academic mobility, research cultures, and diary methods. He has published in leading journals, including Higher Education, Teaching in Higher Education, Review of Educational Research, and Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies.

Ahmad has taught on the MA Global Education and International Development course at the University of Warwick, lectured at several universities and higher education institutions in Syria, and collaborated with international organisations, including the Association of Commonwealth Universities and UN-supported NGOs, to promote refugee education across Europe and in conflict-affected regions.

Discussant: Dr Yafa El Masri

Bio:

Dr Yafa El Masri defines herself as both a refugee and a researcher. Having been born and raised in Borj Albarajenah refugee camp for Palestinians in Lebanon, she is dedicated to the support of Palestinian refugees and other migrant communities in the Levant. Yafa is currently a Lecturer in Geography and Global Development at the Global Development Department at the University of East Anglia. She is also a trustee of the Council of British Research in the Levant. Her research focuses on alternative humanitarianisms arising in refugee communities in the light of shrinking humanitarian aid, and the increase of grassroots forms of cooperation in refugee camps such as food sharing, decolonial education and community healthcare.

Chair:Yann Lebeau

Bio: Prof. Lebeau teaches global education, qualitative research methods as well as international higher education policies and management at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Yann also contributes to post-graduate research training workshops (policy analysis, qualitative data analysis) and early career research capacity building programmes. He supervises both PhD and EdD students working on a range of educational questions and policies in the UK and internationally.

Bridging Research with Lived Experience (Group A):

M. Naeim Maleki

Presentation Title: Academic Culture Shock: Navigating research, family and a new culture

Bio: Mohammad Naeim Maleki is a postgraduate researcher at UEA. His research focuses on the intersection of literacies, identity construction, agency and empowerment among male adult literacy learners in conflict affected states. He taught both at the university level and literacy and language courses in the USA, Japan and Afghanistan. He has worked with the UN and INGOs in conflict areas, focusing on education and peace. Naeim has published research papers on teaching methodologies, literacies and education. He currently works as a research assistant for ROMLIT project at the UEA focusing on early year literacies of Gypsy, Roma and Traveler communities.

Abstract: As an asylum seeker, a PhD student, a father, a husband, a son, a brother and a former university teacher, I wear many hats. These are only the ones that I feel deeply responsible for and must put time and effort into managing respectfully and, to my best, appropriately. Considering these roles, in this presentation, I share my personal and academic journey, and will reflect on what it means to adjust to a new academic culture while also caring for my family and settling into a completely different way of life. Starting life in a new country has brought many challenges, but also important lessons. I will talk about the “culture shock” I experienced when I began my PhD studies—how research is done differently here, how universities work and how I’m learning to find my place in this system. I will also speak about the emotional and practical struggles of rebuilding life in a new place and how I have been trying to balance family responsibilities, cultural expectations and academic demands. I hope my story offers insight into the real-life experiences of refugee academics and encourages universities to build more bridges and better support people in similar situations.

Atiqullah Sayed

Bio: Atiq is an Afghan by origin with 30 years of experience with the Red Cross, EU, the UN, IOM and now with the UK local government, focusing on the area of displacement, refugees and emergency interventions. In the past 12 years, he has been working very closely with the Home Office, solicitors and charities, supporting unaccompanied children. He is a social worker by background and has a Master's degree in Human Rights and another one in MRes. His PhD is also focusing on the care experience of unaccompanied children in the UK.

Presentation title: Unaccompanied refugee children in the UK

Abstract: There are approximately 8,000 unaccompanied refugee children currently in the care of UK local authorities. Most come from war zones or conflict-affected regions such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, and Iraq and Syria, as well as persecuted minorities from Iran, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. While these children represent less than 5% of the UK’s total refugee population, and refugees themselves constitute only around 11% of the overall migration.

The quality of care these children receive varies drastically depending on their local authority. A small minority are supported adequately, but the majority face severe challenges, including legal uncertainties, inadequate housing and education, and heightened risks of exploitation and mental health crises. Despite protective frameworks like the Children Act 1989, persistent gaps and systemic failures leave many stranded in prolonged asylum processes, with little knowledge of their rights or access to proper support. Cultural misunderstandings and a lack of targeted interventions further compound their struggles.

Most unaccompanied refugee minors do not come from deprived or dysfunctional backgrounds. Many possess significant potential to thrive and contribute to society. Yet this potential is frequently squandered—whether through neglect, bureaucratic inefficiency, or outright policy failure—leaving these children at risk of becoming another lost generation.

Olga Sovenko

Title: Feminization of poverty among IDPs in Ukraine during the war in 2022-2025

Bio: Olga Sovenko is an Honorary Lecturer (since 2022) and the British Academy Research Fellow (since 2023) at the School of Politics, Philosophy and Area Studies (Arts and Humanities Faculty, University of East Anglia, Norwich) and a Lecturer in Sociology - Serzh Lyfar Kyiv Municipal Academy of Dance (2009-2025). She is PhD in Sociology (2015), a Researcher, focused on applied sociological methods, a monitoring and evaluation specialist and the Ambassador of The Centre of Ukrainian Studies (Kyiv) in the UK.
Her main scientific interests include media studies, gender studies, sociology of family, content analysis, monitoring and evaluation, social science methodology, applied studies, management of social science research, media information literacy, media literacy education and civil society institutions.

Abstract: The huge social impact of the full-scale war in Ukraine, launched in 2022, has resulted particularly in the female’s life circumstances and the high level of social risks spread among single mothers’ families and families with young children. This fact is bringing us to the need of examining the feminisation of poverty phenomenon, which is provoked by the crucial social destruction and disorganisation due to the war.

The group of internally displaced people in Ukraine is counted by 5mln nowadays. In our survey results (2023), we have collected 100 interviews from the IDP women who were having their full families before the start of the full-scale war in 2022. Compared with the other two groups, they were more often unemployed, more of them had below average and low income and the damage or loss of their properties.

Social Change, Gender and Finding Support (Group B):

Mediator: Someone from Group B?

Lauren Bouttell

Title: Conceptualising social change, precarity and informal learning in refugee education research

Bio: Lauren Bouttell has recently completed her PhD at the University of East Anglia, through which she explored adult learning in community organisations working with sanctuary seekers in England and Scotland. She is particularly interested in the relationship between learning and social change in community contexts. Lauren has volunteered for a number of years as an English teacher in Glasgow and Norwich. She currently works as a Community Projects Manager at GYROS, an organisation supporting refugees and migrants in the East of England, as well as being a Research Associate at the School of Global Development at UEA.

Abstract: In the midst of large-scale social transformation, continual funding cuts to adult education, and a ‘hostile’ environment to migration in the UK, organisations supporting sanctuary seekers are working within precarious circumstances. Drawing on an ethnographic study of organisations providing learning opportunities for people who migrate to the UK, this presentation reflects on conceptual approaches to this research, framing adult education within such precarious conditions. This presentation draws on the notion of ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2011) and precarious forms of pedagogy, turning to how everyday considerations of social change (Pedwell, 2021), sit within broader conceptualisations of transformation. This is integrated with an approach to education that prioritises informal learning, acknowledging the times and spaces that learning happens within organisations that are not necessarily planned or typically recognised as learning. Opportunities are opened for discussing the relationship between learning and social change that prioritise the agency of sanctuary seekers and educators in organisations, within the wider context of a hostile policy environment and precarious conditions.

Heather Gray

Bio: Heather Gray is a PhD candidate in Global Development at the University of East Anglia. Her ethnographic and participatory research explores how top-down policy shapes the lives of local and migrant fishers in North-East Scotland, arguing that the fishing industry must be understood through an intersectional feminist lens to support sustainable coastal livelihoods. Her work with migrant women fish processors highlights post-harvest labour's gendered and wellbeing dimensions, bringing visibility to voices often excluded from policy discourse. Her research interests include wellbeing in development, gender, migration, the politics of knowledge in coastal and rural contexts, and public policy.

Title: Beyond the Catch: Examining the Gendered and Migrant Workforce in Scotland’s Fish Processing Industry

Abstract: The fishing industry was often analysed through the male-dominated catching sector, while the post-harvest processing sector, historically sustained by women, remained largely overlooked. The social context highlights how industrialisation, changing social attitudes, and migration patterns have transformed Scotland’s fish processing sector from a traditional, family-based occupation to one dominated by migrant labour, comprising 80% of workers in the studied area. This study was part of a qualitative doctoral study conducted within a Scottish fishing community, which employed ethnographic methods with community members and Photovoice with migrant women fish processors. The focus was on three groups of women: fishermen’s wives, local and migrant fish-processors, examining how women’s fishing identities were constructed in Northeast Scotland’s post-harvest fishery, with particular emphasis on migrant women. The study utilised an intersectional approach to reveal how varying circumstances shaped the women’s subjective experiences. Wellbeing findings indicated that fishermen’s wives enjoyed the greatest material security, followed by local processors, while migrant women faced everyday precarity due to policy failures and racialised capitalist inequalities as they pursued long-term security through migration. Across all groups, relational wellbeing played a crucial role in navigating the challenge. Their gendered experience positively influenced their ability to form and maintain social connections, which were vital for survival and adaptation to structural inequalities and gendered expectations. The study recommends an intersectional approach to policymaking to promote more equitable outcomes in the fishery sector.

Fariba Alamgir

Bio: Fariba Alamgir is an anthropologist with research interests in the politics of identity, resource access, and governance. Her work primarily focuses on marginalized populations, including indigenous communities and forced migrants. She is currently a Senior Research Associate on the Global Library Project at the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia (UEA). The Global Library Project explores historical and contemporary processes of knowledge generation and cross-cultural exchange, focusing on libraries across borders. She completed her PhD in International Development at UEA and the University of Copenhagen, focusing on ethnicized land conflict and unsettled land governance in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.

Title: Library and Refuge: The Role of Public Libraries in Supporting Forced Migrants in the UK

Abstract: While libraries are not formally part of the UK's integration policy, their role in language learning, information acquisition, promoting community cohesion, and generating social capital is well established. However, the national-level policy frameworks and action plans concerning libraries do not explicitly address forced migrants’ access to public libraries or outline practices for proactively engaging with migrant groups. Within this context, the paper analyses how public libraries in the UK are operating as spaces for social connectivity, and for the acquisition of knowledge, information, and services for asylum seekers and refugees. By employing an ethnographic approach, data were gathered through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with (i) refugees and asylum seekers, and (ii) librarians, local council workers, NGO workers, and volunteers. While the paper outlines the barriers and opportunities that refugees and asylum seekers experience in accessing necessary services and support, it also highlights gaps in library practices in serving diverse groups with multiple languages and cultures, by using the concept of social justice as a framework. Initial analysis of emerging research data suggests that English language sessions, learning resources, and the welcoming spaces provided at public libraries are often valued by those who can access them. For some, libraries represent the only public buildings they have entered since arriving in the host city. However, people's access to information about library services, and their ability to engage with them, are largely shaped by their diverse backgrounds, needs and migration status which the existing library services have addressed in a limited manner. The paper presents a deeper understanding of the relationship between libraries and forced migrants by analysing people’s experiences and perspectives regarding policies, services and the interactions they encounter.