2022/23 Seminars

This seminar series is organised as part of scholarly activities within Centre for Education and International Development at UCL Institute of Education under the research theme Education, Conflict and Peacebuilding. The convenor of the seminar series is  Professor Tejendra Pherali.

These events are free to attend but you are requested to register on eventbrite.

Higher education for refugees and asylum seekers: Experiences from Africa and the UK

Despite significant improvement in access to primary education globally, only 63 percent refugee children are enrolled in school. More than three quarters of secondary-aged refugees are still deprived of secondary education and when it comes to the higher level studies, refugee youths’ enrolment is dismally 3 percent whilst the global average of tertiary education enrolment of non-refugees is 37 percent. This portrays a situation of colossal failure of international and host communities in providing a meaningful future for refugee populations whose only hope for social, economic and spatial mobility hinges upon high quality and high levels of education. Nevertheless, there are some promising examples at the regional levels in Africa and in the UK where universities and non-governmental organisations have built partnerships to innovate and experiment new models of higher level learning for refugees and asylum seekers. This seminar will bring together the knowledge and experiences from some of these initiatives to highlight new higher education possibilities for refugee communities.

Time: 11am – 1pm
Date: 3 March 2023
Venue: Room PC Lab 4, Level 4, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL

PLEASE CLINK HERE TO REGISTER

CONVENOR/ CHAIR:

Professor Tejendra Pherali
Professor of Education, Conflict and Peace
IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society

SPEAKERS:

Professor Barbara Moser-Mercer
Professor Emerita and Founder of InZone, University of Geneva and Visiting Professor, University of Nairobi 

The African Higher Education in Emergencies Network (AHEEN) is a whole-of-society network supporting the digital implementation of degrees and diplomas for forcibly displaced youth on the continent. As a South-South project AHEEN works on the interface between academe and humanitarian contexts to ensure that the principles, standards and ways of working governing each are respected and that appropriate and sustainable solutions are developed that support system change in refugee-hosting countries. Barbara will discuss the critical issues relating to higher education development in refugee contexts of Africa and share the lessons learned from the AHEEN project.

Catherine Gladwell
Founder and Chief Executive, Refugee Education UK

In this seminar, Catherine will examine the intersections between access to higher education for refugee and asylum seeking students in the UK and internationally. In the context of Refugee Education UK’s broader work supporting young refugees to access and thrive in education from primary to tertiary, we will explore findings from a recent research study conducted by REUK and the University of Warwick (2022), which outlines the primary barriers and enablers to accessing higher education for young people seeking sanctuary in the UK. We will examine points of intersection with the global landscape, and link to three current examples of practice: the REUK Access to Higher Education programme, the Displaced Students’ Initiative and the Global Evidence for Refugee Education initiative.

Áine McAllister
Lecturer in Languages in Education and Doctoral Researcher, International Centre for Intercultural Studies, UCL IOE

In her contribution to the seminar Aine will discuss the findings of a recent applied ethnopoetic inquiry: Seeking Access, which voices the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers, who are seeking access to Higher Education in the UK. She will also discuss her ongoing UCL Public Policy Fellowship work to develop engagement pathways with university policy makers to reduce barriers to access, work which is underpinned by Seeking Access. As well as exploring how the experience of seeking access to higher education mirrors the wider experience of seeking asylum and refuge, she will zoom in on the impact of language as an exclusionary tool.

SPEAKERS’ BIOS 

Barbara Moser-Mercer, Professor Emerita and Founder of InZone (University of Geneva), is visiting professor at University of Nairobi, engaged in strengthening African solutions that advance Higher Education in Emergencies (HEiE) and has been coordinating the launch phase of the African Higher Education in Emergencies Network (AHEEN), and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Center. Following her initial training as conference interpreter she pursued her studies and research in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, and focused on the development of expertise in complex cognitive skills of bilinguals, both from a cognitive psychology and a cognitive neuro-science perspective. These findings have been instrumental in informing the design and the development of student-centered multilingual digital learning environments in different fragile contexts. Building on insights and experience in a variety of displacement contexts she has studied, as well as further developed, a viable interface between humanitarian and academic actors conducive to scaling higher education opportunities for displaced youth that benefit both students and their communities and inform education policy in refugee-hosting countries.

Áine McAllister is a Lecturer in Languages in Education and a doctoral researcher in the International Centre for Intercultural Studies at UCL IOE. Through her intercultural pedagogy and research she uses poetry and collaborative poetic inquiry to amplify marginalised voices, particularly those of refugees and asylum seekers. She teaches and researches on refugee education in the UK and emergency contexts internationally. Áine leads a programme for highly qualified refugees and asylum seekers called ReConnect, Preparation for Higher Education which is funded and initiated by ReConnect,  a charity who support refugees and asylum seekers into Higher Education and into Teaching.