Cambridge Refugee Week 2025
Politics of Knowledge, Power, and the Struggle for Academic Futures: Higher Education and Schooling Amidst War and Displacement
19 and 20 June 2025 (hybrid)
Venues
Cambridge, UK
University of Cambridge
Beirut, Lebanon
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Hamra, Beirut
Organizers
– Centre for Lebanese Studies
– Cambridge Refugee Hub/ Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement
– In collaboration with REAL Centre
Languages
English and Arabic (simultaneous interpretations available)
In times of crisis, displacement, and war, education becomes both a battleground and a site of resistance. Schools and universities are not only places of learning but also spaces where power is negotiated, knowledge is contested, and futures are shaped. This conference seeks to critically examine the role of higher education and schooling amidst conflict and forced migration, bringing together scholars, students, policymakers, and practitioners to rethink the politics of knowledge production in times of upheaval.
Coinciding with World Refugee Day in June, the event interrogates dominant, top-down approaches to education in crisis settings—approaches that often reinforce global knowledge hierarchies and marginalize the voices of those most affected. It calls for a radical reimagining of education: not as a system imposed on displaced communities but as one co-lead by refugees and forcibly displaced people. How can higher education and schools serve as a space of resistance, inclusion, and collaboration? What does it take to develop knowledge production models that centre local expertise, lived experience, and the agency of refugee scholars and institutions—including those operating in exile?
This conference is grounded in a decolonial ethos, foregrounding equity, relationality, and resistance to structural inequalities in global education governance. Participants will explore the challenges of building partnerships in emergency settings, the politics of solidarity, and the role of both schooling and higher education in shaping the futures of displaced populations. Key themes include:
– The power dynamics of knowledge production in crisis-affected education
– Refugee-led education initiatives and the decolonization of humanitarian aid
– The role of international organizations, donors, and local actors in shaping education governance
– The politics of academic exile and the possibilities for sustaining intellectual communities in displacement
– Strategies for co-producing research and teaching under conditions of war and forced migration
– The challenges of accountability, equity, and sustainability in education interventions
This gathering also marks the culmination of the British Academy Bilateral Chair Programme between the Centre for Lebanese Studies and the University of Cambridge and is hosted by the Cambridge Refugee Hub in collaboration with REAL Centre, CGC. Building on years of work on refugee education and its politics, the conference offers a moment to reflect on the trajectory of the field over the past two decades—while pushing toward more just, inclusive, and sustainable academic futures.
Agenda
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Register for onsite attendance: applications@lebanesestudies.com
Register for online attendance
Schedule | Day 1
Thursday, June 19
9:00-9:20
Registration
9:20-9:30
Welcome & Introduction (Maha Shuayb and Tugba Basaran)
James Watt, Centre for Lebanese Studies
Hilary Cremin, Head of Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
Freya Perry, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
9:30-10:00
Unpacking the industry of refugee education and research towards an equitable theory and practice: reflections and conclusions
Maha Shuayb, Centre for Lebanese Studies/University of Cambridge
10:00-11:30
Panel 1: Governance and humanitarian responses lessons learnt from14 years of the Syrian refugee crisis (Roundtable workshop)
Her Excellency Minister Dr Rima Karami, Humanitarian Responses and governance of the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education
The Neoliberalism–Humanitarianism Nexus in the Syrian Conflict
Rabie Nasser, Syrian Center for Policy Research
Governing Education in Lebanon after two decades of aid
Cathrine Brun, Centre for Lebanese Studies
Chairs: Maha Shuayb, Centre for Lebanese Studies/University of Cambridge (in UK) & Rima Bahous, Lebanese American University (in Lebanon)
11:30-12:00
Coffee Break
12:00-13:45
Panel 2: Taking Stock: Two Decades of Refugee Education
Chairs: Zeena Zakharia, University of Maryland College Park (in UK) &
Cathrine Brun, Centre for Lebanese Studies (in Lebanon)
Beyond Aid, What’s Next for Education in Emergency Settings
Faiza Hassan, Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies INEE
Between Promises and Abandonmnet: Fourteen Years of Refugee Education Under International Watch
Samah Kharraz, Sawa for Development
Reframing the purpose of Education: Toward Recognitive Justice for Refugees – A Comparative Longitudinal Study in Lebanon, Turkey, and Australia
Mohammad Hammoud, Centre for Lebanese Studies
Decolonising Knowledge Production in the Field of Refugee Education: Unsettling the Ontology and Epistemology of a Nascent Field
Cyrine Saab, Centre for Lebanese Studies
13:45-14:45
Lunch Break
14:45-16:15
Panel 3: Book Launch
“Education in Times of War: An Act of Life”
Introduction: Chair: Rabab Tamish, Bethlehem University
Samia Bishara Rizeq, Manhajiyat
Maha Shuayb, Centre for Lebanese Studies/University of Cambridge
Gaza’s schools are closed. But here’s what we learned in the school of war
Asma Mustafa, English Teacher, Gaza, Palestine
Halt on Education
Mohammed Shuber, Researcher in Educational and Community Issues – Gaza, Palestine
How do they let us know that they are okay this time?
Manar Al Zraiy, English Teacher, Gaza Palestine
Discussion
16:15-16:25
Break
16:25-17:55
Panel 4: Digital Connections
Chair: Lorraine Charles, Founder of Na’amal
Coding and Digital Work for Refugees in Jordan
Sofiane Ammar, Founder of Chams
Mentoring to support academic language and study skills for higher education among Afghan women
Jonathan Birtwell, King’s College London
A Refugee Perspective of Digital Work in Kenya
Ukech Daniel Uboa, Kenya
UNHCR Innovation and Digital Livelihoods
Amy Fallon, UNHCR
Digital Work for Refugees in Kenya
Marie Godin, University of Leicester
17:55-18:10
Launch: Refugee Language Education Unit
Yongcan Liu, University of Cambridge and Zach T. Denton, Universityof Cambridge
19:00
Dinner for Panelists
Schedule | Day 2
Friday, June 20
9:00-9:20
Registration & Coffee
9:20-9:30
Welcome & Introduction
Tugba Basaran, University of Cambridge/ Erwin Yin, British Academy
9:30-10:45
Panel 5: Legacies of Empire and Higher Education
Chair: Tugba Basaran, University of Cambridge
Universities and the long afterlives of enslavement and colonialism
Pedro Ramos Pinto, University of Cambridge
A university for empire: Making minds, shaping rule in Khartoum
Sahar El-Asad, University of Cambridge
Curiosity, collaboration and transformation: A proposal towards an actionable and accountable academia
Monica Moreno Figueroa, University of Cambridge
Defining the Local in the Post Soviet space: Central Asian Universities between ideologies and nationalisms
Prajakti Kalra, University of Cambridge
10:45-11:15
Coffee Break
11:15-12:30
Panel 6: Universities & Research in Exile
Chair: Richard Latham Lechowick, University of Cambridge
When the University is a Refugee: the case of the American University of Afghanistan
Victoria Fontan, American University of Afghanistan
European Humanities University in Exile: Phoenix or Whipping Boy
Aliaksandr Kalbaska, European Humanities University, Lithuania
Unsilenced: Reclaiming Knowledge and Power Through EducationUnder Taliban Rule
Marissa Quie, University of Cambridge
From the Workshop: The Global History Lab and the Right to Research
Marcia Schenck, University of Potsdam and Gerawork Gizan Teferra, Kenya
12:30-13:30
Lunch Break
13:30-14:45
Panel 7: Policy, Partnerships, and the Practice of Localisation
Chair: Solava Ibrahim, Anglia Ruskin University
Transforming Humanitarian Partnerships: Dismantling Colonial Legacies for Refugee Education
Zeena Zakharia, University of Maryland College Park
Francine Menashy, University of Toronto
The two faces of liberalism in education and conflict
Jee Rubin, Centre for Lebanese Studies and the Centre for International Education, University of Sussex
Weaponizing Knowledge! Sudanese Education in the Shadow of Conflict and Displacement
Amira Ahmad, American University in Cairo
Scholarship in the shadow of atrocity: Navigating responsibility,solidarity, and silence during the Tigray war.
Teklehaymanot Weldemichel, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester
14:45-15:15
Coffee Break
15:15-16:30
Panel 8: Educational Programs and Partnerships
Chair: Eolene Boyd-MacMillan, University of Cambridge
International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law partnering withhealthcare and education to protect healthcare provision
Saleyha Ahsan, University of Cambridge
Mental health and psycho-social support interventions in the Middle East & North Africa
Luma Bashmi, University of Cambridge
Education as an intervention for mental health services during conflict and displacement in Myanmar
Maha Y. See, Myanmar Clinical Psychology Consortium
Reciprocal learning through a health partnership model: Spotlight on Myanmar
Annalan Navaratnam, University of Cambridge
Enabling access to higher education and improving study outcomes: reflections from post-coup Myanmar
Joanna Barnard, Prospect Burma
16:30-17:00
Coffee Break
17:00-18:00
Fireside Chat: The Role of Academia and Academics in Times of Crisis, Oppression, Conflicts and Wars
Kamal Munir, University of Cambridge
Arathi Sriprakash, University of Oxford
Mezna Qato, University of Cambridge
Pauline Rose, University of Cambridge
Tugba Basaran, University of Cambridge
Yusuf Sayed, University of Cambridge
Maha Shuayb, Centre for Lebanese Studies/University of Cambridge
18:00-19:30
Reception
Bios
Dr Saleyha Ahsan, MD
University of Cambridge
Saleyha Ahsan is a practising emergency medicine doctor, a broadcaster and a former British Army officer. Saleyha regularly reports for The One Show on BBC One. She served for three years as a medical support officer with the Royal Army Medical Corps, which included a tour of Bosnia in 1997 as part of the Nato Stablisation Force (SFOR). She was so inspired by the work done by army doctors on Bosnian trauma survivors, she applied to study medicine. She got a place in Dundee and began her career in medicine. In 2018, she was awarded her honorary degree, Doctor of Laws, by her alma mater in recognition of her humanitarian and media work.
Her predominate area of academic work lies in the issue of attacks against healthcare in conflict zones for which she is persistently covering and developing projects. More recently, however, she has been UK bound due to her growing portfolio of work dedicated to the NHS, human rights and social welfare related stories.
Sofiane Ammar
Chams
Sofiane Ammar has spent over 35 years in the telecommunications, Internet, and digital industries as a serial entrepreneur and active business angel. He was one of the shareholders and CTO of ISDnet (the first independent French Internet Service Provider in 1996-2001) that was sold to the UK Telco Cable & Wireless. He has created and co-created three other startups up to 2017. From 2017 to 2019, he served as the Managing Director of the Camp Accelerator, an innovative campus in southern France, mentoring and advising more than 40 startups. He founded CHAMS NGO in 2018, which builds coding schools in or near refugee camps in the Middle East and shares part of his time advising seed impact startups and entrepreneurs. In 2023, he cofounded 42 School in Amman, with Crown Prince Foundation, a French coding school with 55 campuses in over 30 countries. He holds a computer science degree from the University of Tunisia and an MBA in distributed systems from Dauphine University.
Dr Joanna Barnard
Prospect Burma
Joanna Barnard is the CEO of Prospect Burma, a UK-registered charity working to support higher education for young people from Myanmar. With the post-coup collapse of Myanmar’s higher education system, the charity supports access to international universities both online and in-person, to lay the foundations for a peaceful, fair and prosperous future for the country.
Joanna studied Geography at the University of Cambridge and completed an MA and PhD at the University of Nottingham. She spent a number of years living in Myanmar, holding positions at the EU Delegation and as Research Director at a boutique business advisory firm. With Prospect Burma, she has led projects funded by the ILO, USAID, UN agencies and the US Department of State. Alongside this role, she provides consultancy input into projects across a range of fields, including healthcare.
Dr Tugba Basaran
University of Cambridge
Tugba Basaran is Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement at the University of Cambridge as well as the convener of the Cambridge Refugee Hub. She has held visiting positions at Harvard Law, Princeton, Sciences-Po and the Institute for Advanced Studies and tenure as assistant professor at the University of Kent. Her research is located at the intersection of politics, law and society, examining global practices of governance. Her research is, amongst others, on legal borders and geographies, claims to extra-territoriality and the production of indifference, law’s distinctions between liberal and illiberal and tensions between state and empire. She is author of the monograph ‘Security, Law and Borders: At the Limit of Liberties’. In her research, she seeks to extrapolate past and present formations of governance, prompting queries on law’s subjectivities, space and time, in an effort to reimagine politics, the way we govern and are governed, and to question established political, legal and social theories. Her expertise of international studies was moulded not only through research, but equally through residency and work in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe - in academic as well as senior managerial positions - in a career spanning over twenty-five years.
Luma Bashmi
University of Cambridge
Luma Bashmi is in her fourth year of doctoral candidacy in the Department of Psychiatry and Cambridge Public Health. She is focusing on mental health and wellbeing among Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon by applying the IC-ADAPT framework and looking more widely at mental health in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region.
Luma is a lecturer in psychology at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland - Medical University of Bahrain (RCSI-Bahrain), Fulbright Scholar, and the co-founder and director of a mental health support non-profit foundation in Lebanon, “Elaa Beirut”. Elaa Beirut was founded in response to the 2020 Beirut port explosion, socioeconomic crisis, and pandemic-related mental health and psychosocial distress. With an international network of 30 mental healthcare providers, the non-profit foundation provided over 200 therapy and training sessions to 44 individuals and NGOs. She was the former Chairperson of the Institutional Review Board and Head of Scientific Research & Development at King Hamad University Hospital (Bahrain).
Dr Jonathan Birtwell
King's College London
Jonathan Birtwell conducts research which explores the way that students with refugee backgrounds construct identities as learners as they develop aspirations to study in higher education. His approach explores the interaction of structure and agency, as well as interconnected temporal frames of identity construction. At King's College London he contributes to a research project on higher-education led safe pathways to sanctuary, and universities can contribute an education dimension to the UK community sponsorship scheme. Since 2022 he has led online English for Academic Purposes, firstly for displaced Ukrainian students and then for Afghan women through a partnership between Christ's College Cambridge and Voice of America under the auspices of the Centre for the study of Global Human Movement. As part of this project he has developed the mentoring circles initiate, which connects Cambridge staff, students and partners to Afghan women to support their confidence in using Academic English.
Dr Eolene Boyd-MacMillan
University of Cambridge
Eolene Boyd-MacMillan works in public mental health promotion to support resilience and wellbeing across communities and groups with refugee and migrant populations. She was the lead on the Social and Emotional Learning component of the Learning Passport, developed through the UNICEF-Cambridge-Microsoft partnership, which has reached over 10M children, young people, and educators in 47 countries. Through interdisciplinary collaborations funded by governmental and charitable bodies, she researches and develops programmes to enable polarized groups to find ways to work together despite divides, differences, and disagreements. She is Convenor of the Myanmar Desk, Refugee Hub, Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, and is based in the Department of Psychiatry in the Cambridge Clinical School.
Lorraine Charles
Na’amal
Lorraine Charles is a social entrepreneur and researcher and the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Na'amal. The organization partners with leading organisations to support refugees and other underrepresented communities through skills training, mentorship and remote work placement opportunities. Lorraine holds significant roles with Finn Church Aid and the International Labour Organization and is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. She is known for her expertise in linking forcibly displaced individuals with remote work opportunities and is a member of various advisory committees focused on digital solutions and livelihood programs. Her expertise is in political economics, development, education and refugee issues in the Middle East.
Sahar ElAsad
University of Cambridge
Sahar ElAsad is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, where she explores the entanglements of colonial education, metaphysics, and posthumanist theory. Her doctoral thesis, The Posthuman Sudan: Plastic Archives, Diffracted Realities, and Entangled Beings, employs a diffractive methodology to examine the afterlives of colonial institutional structures in Sudan’s education system.
Beyond academia, Sahar has also contributed to policy research with leading think tanks and international organizations, including the Al Qasimi Foundation, UNESCO, the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), and the European Institute of Peace (EIP).
Amy Fallon
UNHCR
Amy Fallon is an Associate Innovation Officer at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
Prof Mónica Morena Figueroa
University of Cambridge
Mónica Moreno Figueroa is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow in Social Sciences at Downing College, Cambridge. Her research has primarily developed around three areas: the lived experience of ‘race’ and racism; feminist theory and the interconnections between beauty, emotions and racism; visual methodologies and applied research collaborations. She has lectured at Goldsmiths and Birkbeck College, London, University of Nottingham, Newcastle University, Princeton University and El Colegio de Mexico.
An integral part of her academic work has been her commitment to explore different forms of engaged and engaging sociology with a deep concern for social justice. This has taken her to develop collaborations and projects that aim to make racism public. In the summer of 2011, Mónica co-founded the Collective COPERA (Colectivo para Eliminar el Racismo en Mexico: https://colectivocopera.org/) with the leadership of Dr Emiko Saldivar (University of California-SB) and Dr Alicia Castellanos (UAM-Iztapalapa), which has now grown to include a wider group of academics and activists. The collective has been developing a series of initiatives to make racism public in Mexico, visibilise racism in its multiple forms of expression in the country and incorporate a 'race' and racism perspective in public policy and social activism. COPERA is part of the Network of Antiracist Action and Research, RAIAR
Dr Victoria Fontan
Victoria Fontan is the Provost of the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) and co-chair of the Alliance for the Education of Women in Afghanistan (AEWA), which she co-created as a shadow Ministry of Education for Afghan women and girls. She currently leads AUAF's operations in exile, sustaining academic excellence and access under conditions of political repression. Through AEWA, she works with over 100 organizations to establish quality assurance and a peer recognition framework that supports alternative and community-led education across Afghanistan. Her work focuses on resilience, equity, and innovation in higher education in emergencies.
Gerawork Teferra Gizaw
Columbia Global Nairobi
Gerawork Teferra Gizaw holds a Master's degree in Development Economics and has completed the Global History Lab and the History Dialogue Project. Currently, he is a research fellow at Columbia Global Nairobi. He has worked for over a decade as an academic tutor, advisor, learning facilitator, and teacher at Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Gerawork also holds honorary research fellow status in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of Exeter. His past research areas include oral history, refugee life, education, hope, and hospitality. He is an enthusiastic wonderer motivated by illuminating experiential realities that orthodox disciplinary schools of thought do not constrain. He has been awarded the prestigious 2024 annual Voltaire Prize from Potsdam University.
Dr Marie Godin
University of Leicester | University of Oxford
Marie Godin is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leicester, School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, and a research affiliate at the University of Oxford's Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). A British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Marie conducts the project ‘Refugees, Social Protection and Digital Technologies’, exploring how the development of tech-social protection initiatives led by, with or for refugees is contributing to a reshaping of the politics of welfare at the local, national and transnational levels, with a particular focus on international migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. Marie has published extensively on the Congolese diaspora and the politics of 'home' and belongings in different contexts. Her broader research interests lie in migration and development, focusing on diaspora engagement and gender, second-generation diaspora activism and homeland states and transnational social protection.
Prof Emeritus Aliaksandr Kalbaska
European Humanities University
Aliaksandr Kalbaska is Emeritus Professor of European Humanity University and teaching fellow at Global History Lab, Princeton, USA/Cambridge, UK. Being founding director of the State History and Culture Museum Reserve “Zaslaŭje” he received his PHD in museum history from Belarusian Academy of Science (1990). With a background in museology form New York University and Masaryk University (Brno) he teaches various courses including Mythologization of Museum Objects (En), A History of the World since 1300 (En), Museum Research (Bel), Intellectual European tradition: Paris (Ru). In various positions, he actively participated in the relocation and restoration of EHU in Lithuania. His current research and practical interests focused on collection of EHU history and creation of university virtual museum https://project9251501.tilda.ws. Some of the recent publications are: “Virtual University Museums as an ‘Absolute Reality’” (2019)// The University Museums and Collections Journal// http://umac.icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/UMACJ_11-1_2019.pdf; "The Language of Museum Objects: The Conflict Between Word and Image" // “The Language of Humanities: Between Word and Image” (2020); “European Cultural Routes of Francysk Skaryna” (In Belarussian) (2023).
Prajakti Kalra
University of Cambridge
Prajakti Kalra is the Research Networks Manager in Wolfson College. Prajakti plays a pivotal role in fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing the college's research initiatives. Prajakti actively engages in scholarly discourse with a special focus on Central Asia and broader Eurasia as the Research Officer for Cambridge Central Asia Forum. She was Affiliated Lecturer in the centre of Development Studies from 2018-2024. Her academic background spans across history, political science, and psychology, informing her interdisciplinary approach to research. Her work challenges Eurocentric narratives and emphasizes indigenous and/or local perspectives in Eurasian history and development. Her research encourages a re-evaluation of dominant paradigms and promotes a more inclusive and diversified understanding of global histories and development processes. She has several publications in international, peer reviewed journals and her manuscript, ‘The Silk Road and the Political Economy of the Mongol Empire’, was published in 2018. She is alumnus of Jesus College (University of Cambridge), University of Chicago, and Indiana University, Bloomington.
Dr Richard Latham Lechowick
University of Cambridge
Richard Latham Lechowick is a research associate with the Global History Lab at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. In this role, he spearheads the Narrative Observatories programme, a peer-led, globally connected research initiative that empowers observers to investigate how stories shape society, identity, and memory within and between communities. He recently authored the book, ‘I won’t let them be like me’: Ezidi Women’s Agency and Identity after the Sinjar Genocide. An aid-worker as well as an academic, he has lived and worked in Iraq, the West Bank, and Aceh, Indonesia.
Prof Kamal Munir
University of Cambridge
Kamal Munir is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for University Community and Engagement, and Professor of Strategy and Policy. Professor Munir has published numerous articles in leading organisational and management journals. His work has been quoted and cited in several forums, including the BBC, CNN, ABC, World Economic Forum, Financial Times, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Wired magazine, and BusinessWeek among many others. Professor Munir has won several teaching awards and consulted for several public and private sector organisations. He is a Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge and Academic Director of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy.
Dr Annalan Navaratnam, MD
Cambridge Global Health Partnerships
Annalan Navaratnam is a Cambridge Global Health Partnerships (CGHPs) East of England Global Health Fellow and a Public Health Registrar. During his fellowship he has worked closely with CGHP's long-standing health partnership with Myanmar. He has previously worked as medical registrar in gastroenterology and acute medicine, led field epidemiology studies on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in several countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, and led research studies in infectious disease and environmental epidemiology. He has been a strong advocate of inclusion health and sought ways to improve scientific understanding to ensure policies were based on robust evidence. Through the fellowship he has had the opportunity to focus on health systems strengthening and understand new approaches to reduce inequalities both globally and in the UK.
Prof Pedro Ramos Pinto
University of Cambridge
Pedro Ramos Pinto is Professor Contemporary History and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. In his current work, he is interested in understanding how contemporary inequalities are shaped by the past, bringing a more long-term view to explain how and why societies distribute resources, opportunities and capabilities. As part of this, Prof. Ramos Pinto directs a research network on the topic of Inequality and History, which was started by an AHRC grant. Since 2018, he has been a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics.
In addition, Dr. Ramos Pintos continues to have an interest on the study of social movements and protest, both in historical and in contemporary perspective and, together with colleagues at the New University of Lisbon and the University of Coimbra, convenes an international on-line seminar on Global Histories of the Portuguese Revolution, 1974-1975.
Dr Mezna Qato
University of Cambridge
Mezna Qato is a Margaret Anstee Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her research and teaching interests centre on histories and theories of social, economic and political transformation amongst refugee and stateless communities, the politics and practice of archives, and global micro-histories of movements and collectivities in the Middle East.
Dr. Qato was previously a Spencer Fellow at the National Academy of Education, and Junior Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. As a Travelling Research Fellow in Takhayyul Project, Mezna is developing a study of everyday socialities of imagination in the long century of Palestinian liberation work.
Dr Marissa Quie
University of Cambridge
Marissa Quie is an expert in Migration, Peace and Conflict Studies. She is Fellow & Director of Studies HSPS at Lucy Cavendish and College Lecturer in Politics and Director of Studies in HSPS at Magdalene College. She was previously a Research Fellow at Queens' College Cambridge and Samuel Reichmann Fellow at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge.
Dr. Quie’s current research focuses on the challenges linked with migration and displacement as a consequence of war and conflict and political, socioeconomic and environmental crises. She is interested in the motifs of participation and protection that characterise debates about people on the move, including refugees, internally displaced people, women and marginalised groups. Her work engages with the connections between migration, peace and security. Marissa has done extensive consultancy work for the United Nations and for the Government of Afghanistan. She has acted as an Advisor to the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme (APRP). She has been a Mentor to Afghan students both at Cambridge and at Oxford.
Prof Pauline Rose
University of Cambridge
Pauline Rose joined Cambridge University in February 2014 as Professor of International Education, where she is Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre in the Faculty of Education. She is also Senior Research Fellow at the UK Department for International Development. Prior to joining Cambridge, Pauline was Director of the EFA Global Monitoring Report (from August 2011) during which time she directed two reports on youth, skills and work, and on teaching and learning. Before becoming Director, she worked as Senior Policy Analyst with the team for three years, leading the research for three reports on the themes of governance, marginalization and conflict. Before joining the EFA Global Monitoring Report, Pauline was Reader in international education and development at the University of Sussex.
Pauline is author of numerous publications on issues that examine educational policy and practice, including in relation to inequality, financing and governance, democratization, and the role of international aid. She has worked on large collaborative research programmes with teams in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia examining these issues. Throughout her career, she has worked closely with international aid donors and non-governmental organisations, providing evidence-based policy advice on a wide range of issues aimed at fulfilling commitments to education for all. She is also experienced in communicating research to broadcast and print media.
Prof Yusuf Sayed
University of Cambridge
Yusuf Sayed is Professor of Education specialising in global education policy and development focusing on equity, inclusion, and social justice. Prior to joining Cambridge, he was the Professor of International Education and Development Policy at the University of Sussex, the South African Research Chair in Teacher Education, and the Founding Director of the Centre for International Teacher Education (CITE), at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), South Africa. Yusuf was also the Senior Policy Analyst at the EFA Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO, Team Leader for Education and Skills, at the then Department for International Development (now FCDO) UK, and Head of the Department of Comparative Education at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
Yusuf has over 40 years experience in international education as a scholar, policy practitioner and education rights activist across diverse academic, institutional and development contexts His scholarship is informed by an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, drawing on diverse epistemologies and critical theoretical framings spanning education, international development, sociology, history and critical policy studies.
Prof Marcia Schenck
University of Potsdam
Marcia C. Schenck (https://www.marciacschenck.com) has been a global history professor at the University of Potsdam, Germany, since 2020. She holds a PhD in history from Princeton University and an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on various forms of human mobility, including education, labor migration, and refuge-seeking. She also has a broad interest in knowledge production, global history, oral history.
Her latest books include the open-access monograph Remembering Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), and the co-edited anthology The Right to Research: Historical Narratives by Refugee & Global South Researchers (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). Additionally, she is the founder of the Global History Dialogues Project.
Dr Maha See
Myanmar Clinical Psychology Consortium
Maha Y. See, PsyD in Clinical Psychology, is an educator and practitioner across international boundaries. He has extensive experience in trauma recovery care, including clinical and case management services for displaced persons, survivors of violence, ethnic and sexual minorities, and persons with traumatic brain injury. His management experience includes developing and administering mental health training and outreach. He is the founder and programme director of Myanmar Clinical Psychology Consortium (MCPC) in Yangon, Myanmar/Burma. In the current state of armed conflict in Myanmar, MCPC has transitioned to online education and providing mental health services for and by displaced persons. Dr. See teaches at MCPC and in the master of counselling programme at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
Prof Arathi Sriprakash
University of Oxford
Arathi Sriprakash is Professor of Sociology and Education at the University of Oxford. Her current research examines reparative justice in educational systems and practices. How might collective recognition of past and present injustices help us imagine ‘reparative futures’ of education? This line of inquiry has emerged from Arathi’s scholarship over a number of years which has illuminated the structural injustices of schooling systems. She has examined the politics of educational inequality in the Indian, Australian and UK contexts as well as the global governance of childhood and the family. Underlying much of this research has been an abiding interest in the racial politics of education. Arathi’s scholarship has explored the active erasures of racism and coloniality in the field of education and the ways in which racial capitalism sustains educational injustices. Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Arathi taught at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Sydney. She is a co-convenor of the Race, Empire and Education Research Collective.
Dr Maha Shuayb
University of Cambridge
Maha Shuayb is the British Academy Bilateral Chair Education in Conflict at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies. Dr. Shuayb is also the Director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies since 2012. Prior to that, she was a Senior Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She is a founding member and the former president of the Lebanese Association for History. She is also a co-founding member of the Disability Hub, a collective initiative that aims to promote research and advocacy around disability in the Arab World.
Maha’s research focuses on the sociology and politics of education, particularly equity and equality in education, and the implications of inequalities on marginalized groups such as refugee children and persons with disabilities. Her research interests also focus on curriculum and educational reform in Lebanon. Maha has numerous publications on education.
Daniel Uboa Uketch
Na’amal
Daniel Uboa Uketch is a skilled web developer and AI trainer with a strong track record in building user-focused web applications and training various AI models. With a blend of technical expertise and teaching experience, he helps teams and organizations unlock the power of modern web technologies. Daniel currently works as a freelance web developer.