Refugee Week 2024: Seminar 2

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Resisting hostility: the strive to becoming a sanctuary university

Speakers: Koula Charitonos (The Open University)

Quality higher education (HE) is not easily accessible by the forcibly displaced. The numbers are alarming: in 2023, the number of displaced people worldwide had risen to 108 million - the highest ever recorded. For tens of millions of people, their education journeys are disrupted and only 6% of refugees participate in HE (UNHCR, 2021). Universities can be agents for change in this humanitarian crisis – from providing scholarships and opportunities to access and participate in HE for students from a refugee background to advocating for refugee’s human rights. In this seminar, Dr Koula Charitonos will talk about the role of universities in responding to this humanitarian crisis by drawing on the notion of the ‘good university’ (Connell, 2019). She will provide empirical evidence from a study conducted at the Open University with a group of students from refugee backgrounds to reflect on insights generated in navigating studies, relations, institutional systems, policies and practices and importantly, to highlight the university’s journey to becoming a sanctuary university.

Refugee inclusion in higher education in Uganda: discourses, digital technologies, and complexity 

Michael Gallagher (The University of Edinburgh) and Sandra Nanyunja (Refugee Law Project)

Educational inclusion for refugees is increasingly and broadly being framed through digital means. This is problematically characterised at the macro level by global and national narratives that portray the digital as an external and universal force capable of radical transformation and inclusion, and at the micro level with more nuanced accounts that acknowledge an already‐present political economy of technology of everyday practices of (non)adoption and use. 
Particularly for refugees, inclusion is further characterised by a persistent liminality with its attendant experiences of transition and tentativeness. To illustrate the complexity of this inclusion, this presentation will explore findings from two related projects working with refugees in Uganda: a blended bridging programme for refugees to prepare for entry into Ugandan universities; and a project exploring what happens when refugees are in these same universities. Dr Michael Gallagher and Sandra Nanyunja will discuss their experiences with these projects, noting the tensions that emerge from the expectations of participation in university life, and Ugandan life more broadly, amidst digital structures and narratives that complicate inclusion. 

References

• Gallagher, M, Nanyunja, S, Akello, M, Mulondo, A & Miranda, J-J (2024 Forthcoming). Hopeful futures for refugees in higher education: Cultivation, activation, and technology. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.
• Akello, M.; Gallagher, M.; Nanyunja, S.; Mulondo, A.; Cole, G.; Falisse, JB; and Miranda, JJ. (2024 In Review). Minimal computing for the forcibly displaced in Uganda: economies of digital use and non-use, resisting discursive closures, and bespoke alternatives. Learning, Media and Technology.
• Gallagher, M., Najjuma, R., & Nambi, R. (2023). Bidi Bidi creativity: The liminality of digital inclusion for refugees in Ugandan higher education. Social Inclusion, 11(3), 309-319. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v11i3.6686. 
• Nambi, DR, Gallagher, M & Najjuma, DR (2023). Integrating refugee students into Ugandan higher education: Language, othering, and everyday enactments of participation. Research in Comparative and International Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/17454999231185647