Research & Teaching - Refuge and Displacement
Research on refuge and displacement
Research on refuge and displacement takes place across the five of the six schools of the University of Cambridge as well as Cambridge University Press and Assessment. (see also themes on Refugee Hub website). Some of the research, often in cooperation with other universities and partners, include:
- Architecture: Centre for Urban Conflicts Research; Sustainable Shelter;
- Education: Led by Cambridge Partnership for Education, the Learning Passportis a partnership between theUniversity of Cambridge, UNICEF and Microsoft. More recently, Cambridge Partnership for Education and Ukrainian Education Ministry signed agreement to transform education for temporarily displaced children.
- Engineering: Shelter Design Project: Healthy Housing for the Displaced. This project aims to develop climate appropriate shelter for the displaced.
- Public Health: Syrian Healthcare Professional in the UK; Short film by Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement and the Syria Public Health Network (SPHN) follows three refugees in the UK, Germany and Turkey as they set about retraining. Syrian refugee health. Mental health of refugees and migrants.
- Politics, Law, Sociology: Afghan refugees and resettlement/ Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS); refugee and migration law; borders and boundaries; global governance of refugees and migrants – global compacts, policies and practices; digital refugees; refugee finance and insurance.
Improving refugee-access to higher education
The Centre and its Refugee Hub serve as the central point of contact on refugees and displaced persons at the University of Cambridge. Below some illustrations of research:
Alfred Dubs Lecture on Migration and Refugees
Speakers: Lord Dubs and Prof. Bhabha, introduced by the Vice-Chancellor Prof. Toope
Refugees in Cambridge
Refugee-related initiatives and groups at the University of Cambridge and the City of Cambridge
Teaching on refuge and displacement
The Refugee Hub, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, offers training for undergraduates, postgraduates and early career scholars.
- specialized training for student and post-docs working on refuge through interdisciplinary workshops, including ideas of mobility and research methodologies, materialities of migration, and interdisciplinary group work;
- provides joint doctoral workshops with Sciences-Po and King’s College London, including topics as refugee crisis, solidarity crisis between states, criminalization of aid, and saving lives at sea;
- supports relevant summer schools, such as “Designs for a Refugee Shelter Rooftop: Architectural Summer School”;
- in the near future, we plan to set up a refugee reading and writing group, as well as courses on refugees, in cooperation with the relevant departments;
Further, the university offers engagement with refugees in parts of their programs, such as volunteering with refugee MOOC, the refugee crisis of the 1930s and 40s,
Further links:
The Learning Passport
The Learning Passport’s hypothesis is that education quality and learning outcomes for refugee and IDP children can be improved by making available, as a global public good, an education model for basic education for children whose education has been disrupted. It is a joint collaborative project involving UNICEF, Microsoft and the University of Cambridge. Drawing on expertise from across the wider University, the project involved colleagues from Cambridge Assessment, Cambridge Maths, Cambridge University Press, the Faculty of Education, and the Department of Psychology. The project goal was to develop a blueprint curriculum framework as a basis for programme and materials design, with these to be used with refugee and displaced learners in Education in Emergency (EiE) contexts. The curriculum framework was submitted to UNICEF in March 2020 and included a series of key learning sequences for basic education and core skills in Numeracy, Literacy, and Science. It was anticipated that these progressions would be relevant to learners approximately around the ages of 5-14.The framework also included a Social and Emotional Learning component that was established by the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Umeå University (Medical School), Sweden; the Innlandet Hospital Trust, Norway; and Uppsala University, Sweden. A research and recommendations report anchored the project in the available evidence for quality education, as well as the evidence for quality in Education in Emergencies (EiE), and made recommendations for how the Learning Passport could be taken forward or rethought, based on the evidence where possible. To find out more, go here https://www.cambridge.org/gb/partnership/learning-passport
Jewish Postcolonial Migrants and Refugees in Britain and France 1950-1975
By Liran Morav (Sociology), Integration of Jewish postcolonial migrants and refugees in Britain and France between 1950-1975. I focus on the role of Jewish civil society organizations and Jewish ethnic networks in these migrant/refugee groups’ settlement process in both destination countries. Two of the three groups I study were forcibly displaced in the aftermath of the British and French postcolonial withdrawal from the Middle East. These were Jews from Egypt and Jews from Iraq. In addition to both refugee groups, I also examine the experiences of Jewish postcolonial migrants from Tunisia.