News & articles

Lesvos Island, May 2017.  From where I am standing I can see the Turkish coast.  During the night one can also see the lights on the other side of the Greek-Turkish border.  The other side.

Between 2008 and 2015, I was working as a human rights lawyer in various refugee detention centres in Greece. Due to the fact that the Greek state was not providing any legal aid for detained asylum seekers the burden of the provision of free legal aid was on very few NGOs.

OU academic Victoria Canning’s recently published book Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System draws together analyses of policy with domestic and international legislation relating to refugee status and torture, alongside the lived experience of women seeking asylum.

At a time when Brexit negotiations reveal the potential confusion of assuming a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach across Europe, an OU academic described the perils of this approach worldwide.

In February’s theme, “Open To Places”, I would like to highlight a hidden place that most people do not tend to see or speak about in their everyday lives: A British immigration detention centre.

In the encounter between legal professionals and asylum claimants, the latter are the most vulnerable, requiring our help and support as a priority

An OU academic will call for better management of public services, so that disasters such as Grenfell Tower can be avoided.

The OU is just starting its ‘Year of Mygration’ 2018, highlighting the ways in which the university is open not only to places, people and methods, but also the ways in which these are all implicated in mobility and migration.

The leading neurological surgeon in Germany, Dr (later Sir) Ludwig Guttmann came to Oxford in March 1939 as a Jewish refugee from the Nazis.

As we come towards the end of our month of contributions on being ‘Open to People’, it is time to reflect on the Open University’s consistent highlighting of migration’s underlying issues.