Amina Meshnuni and Abdullahi Yussuf, speakers for this year’s TCRU-Coram annual lecture. Credit: James Tye for UCL.

3 June 2025

By Andrea Verdasco and Dushana Pinfield, Events and Communications Manager, TCRU

IOE’s Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) and Coram have called for a fundamental shift in how asylum-seeking children and young people in the UK are supported. The case was put forward by IOE’s Professor Elaine Chase and Coram Young Citizens, Amina Meshnuni and Abdullahi Yussuf, speakers for this year’s TCRU-Coram annual lecture. The lecture marked a significant step in collaboration between UCL and Coram, with the public signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between them, underpinning a commitment to deeper partnership on research-led policy change regarding children’s rights. (more…)

Credit: EduLife Photos via Adobe Stock.

21 January 2025

By Aine McAllister

Highly skilled refugees and asylum seekers encounter multifaceted barriers to accessing postgraduate study in UK higher education. These include wider societal and structural barriers as well as those specific to university entry. Often, the latter is a twofold barrier: to access at all, and to access commensurate with existing qualifications, professional experience and achievements. (more…)

My name is not ‘asylum seeker’: Nadia Mendez Guevara assembles a section of the exhibition. Credit: IOE Communications.

2 May 2024

By Mette Louise Berg

This week, ‘My name is not asylum seeker!’, a pop-up exhibition based on the SOLIDARITIES research project, opens at Halifax Central Library. The exhibition focuses on the everyday lives and experiences of people who have sought asylum in the UK and are waiting for a decision on their application. During the waiting period, people seeking asylum are ‘dispersed’ to different parts of the country and housed in dispersal accommodation, often of very poor quality; most are not allowed to work. (more…)

In Doncaster, much of the dispersal housing lies in outlying areas with few services

21 June 2022

By Mette Louise Berg

Photo by Rasha Kotaiche

This is Refugee Week – a celebration of ‘the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary’ around the world.

These are difficult times for those seeking sanctuary across the Global North. In the UK specifically, asylum is a contentious and politicised issue, and we only rarely hear and listen to the voices of people who seek asylum. In research for the report we are launching this week, we worked with a group of people with personal experience of the asylum system and organisations supporting them in Doncaster and Halifax in Yorkshire, two dispersal towns. We asked questions about housing, and the way they are being (more…)