A place of sanctuary

Our work to support sanctuary

Staff and students are engaged in a range of projects which aim to promote the University's wider mission as a University of Sanctuary - directly supporting refugees and asylum seekers and using academic analysis to look for solutions to issues they face.

Students have been enthusiastic supporters of the Refugee Teaching Programme run by the Students’ Union volunteering programme VTeam with Essex Integration to offer weekly sessions teaching English online and in person. Christopher Moore, the SU’s Volunteering Manager, told Borgen Magazine: “That need for refugees to get support with the English language hasn’t gone away and thankfully, there’s consistent interest in that sort of volunteering from Essex students.”

Meanwhile, Essex’s Centre for Trauma, Asylum and Refugees (CTAR) aims to create spaces for idea exchange and collaboration across sectors and communities. To mark Refugee Week in June, the Centre brought together around 100 people from around the world to make connections, share learning and exchange ideas.

The cross-disciplinary Centre for Migration Studies brings academics together to look at human rights, immigration policies, forced migration, social cohesion, human trafficking and many other issues – working particularly closely with the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change.

Essex is home to many academics determined to make a difference by applying their academic expertise.

Professor Gilbert is supporting the work of the Protection Policy & Legal Advice (PPLA) Section in the UNHCR’s Division of International Protection. Through this work Professor Gilbert is offering underpinning scholarship for UNHCR’s protection policies and legal analysis.

He says: “Having someone embedded in the team but who brings an external voice to the conversation, was seen as a benefit to its projects, the organization and to the people whom it is mandated to protect.”

This year, Professor Gilbert has also worked with colleagues around the world to create the first 'toolkit' to help navigate the complex issues around international protection for people displaced across borders due to climate change and disasters.

Professor Renos Papadopoulos is the founder of the Centre for Trauma, Asylum and Refugees at Essex, establishing the Masters and PhD in Refugee Care. His work across the world led to the awarding of a Fellowship of the British Psychological Society and he has provided vital support and guidance both directly and to those working with refugees, tortured persons, trafficked people and other survivors of political violence and disasters including Ukraine.

Dr Marija Jovanovic, of Essex Law School, analysed proposed Government legislation and highlighted how it risked breaching both domestic and international human rights law that guarantee protection to all victims of modern slavery, without discrimination and without exception. She also worked with the International Organization for Migration to show how the UK’s prison system is failing to detect and support victims of modern slavery, with some inmates found to be serving time for crimes they were forced to commit.

As Vice-Chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Working Group Dr Matthew Gillett helped highlight that arbitrary detention, ill treatment, torture, and even executions were still occurring in Mexico with migrants particularly vulnerable. He led a team of experts to Mexico to visit police stations, migration detention centres, adolescent centres, child protection shelters, mental health hospitals and prosecutors’ offices. Dr Gillett is now Chair of the Working Group.

This year, Eastern Arc, the strategic collaboration between the universities of East Anglia, Essex, Kent and Sussex, is also helping take our work as a University of Sanctuary further. Sanctuary is a priority area for the Eastern Arc and this year’s annual conference titled ‘Sanctuary Solidarities’ will focus in on the subject and include a keynote speech by Essex graduate and UNHCR Representative to the United Kingdom Vicky Tennant.

Linking up with other universities has helped offer unique opportunities to our sanctuary students. In 2024, artwork created by an Essex student was part of a touring exhibition organised by the University of East Anglia following a workshop at King’s College, London. One participant commented: “This project gave us a platform to express ourselves through art, but also to bring awareness to the struggles we have been through to access education.”

The work by the Essex student was a plea for the world to remember what those seeking sanctuary have had to come through. The text at the top of the graphic of a woman fleeing her homeland for safety simply says: ‘Refugees Survivors Not Burden'.