Hope and Resilience for Refugees and Asylum Seekers

A conference on ‘Hope and Resilience for Refugees and Asylum Seekers’

19 June 2012

9:00am – 4:30pm

Peter Williams Lecture theatre

University of Leicester

This event, funded by East Midlands Strategic Health Authority, is planned to mark national Refugee week and is being organised by the clinical psychology department at the University of Leicester in conjunction with a range of refugee and voluntary sector organisations across the East Midlands. This one day conference will be held at the University of Leicester on 19 th June 2012. The theme is Hope and Resilience in the refugee context and it will explore how hope and resilience can be fostered in the current climate through an emphasis on human rights, approaches to justice in psychological therapy, and through building solidarity in the voluntary and statutory sector.

Speakers and workshops include:

Shami Chakrabarti

Shami Chakrabarti is Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) and Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University. She is also a Governor of the British Film Institute, a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, in addition to being a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple. She was recently invited to be one of six independent assessors advising Lord Justice Leveson in his Public Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the UK Press

Taiwo Afuape

Taiwo Afuape is a Principal Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Psychotherapist working in South Camden Community CAMHS for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and Principal Systemic Psychotherapist in an adult Psychology and Psychotherapy service in CNWL NHS Foundation Trust. She is also author of a new book entitled: Power, Resistance and Liberation in Therapy with Survivors of Trauma.

Matt Carr

Matt Carr is a writer and journalist. He is the author of Blood and Faith: the Purging of Muslim Spain (Hurst 2010) and The Infernal Machine: An Alternative History of Terrorism (Hurst 2011). His next book Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent is an investigation of the exclusionary barriers that have been established by European governments both inside and outside the continent to keep out and control the movements of migrants and refugees, based on journeys undertaken over
the last two years to the countries and places where these ‘hard borders’ are most apparent. It is due to be published in the UK this summer by Hurst & Co, and in the United States by New Press.

Nazek Ramadan

Nazak Ramadan is the director of Migrant Voice and is the founder and editor in chief of the ‘New Londoners,’ the first refugee newspaper in London. She is vice chair for the European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN) and represents the EAPN (UK) on the Anti-discrimination and Migration working group at EAPN Europe. Nazek has over 20 years of experience working with migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and ethnic minorities in the UK. Her work has included the production of a number of short films. She was awarded The Migrant and Refugee Woman of the Year award 2012.

Liz Page

Liz Page is UK director of the South Eastern territory of the British Red Cross, responsible for the range of services provided in London and the South East. This includes support to refugees and asylum seekers. She is currently a Trustee for Women for Refugee Women which seeks to challenge the injustices experienced by women and children who have sought asylum in the UK. In association with The New Statesman, Women for Refugee Women ran a campaign against the detention of children.

Film: Nahr el-Bared… Detention Camp by Sandra Madi. Palestine/Qatar (2011)

In 2007, under the guise of eradicating a base for the armed radical Islamist group Fat’h el-Islam, the Lebanese army effectively destroyed the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared. Residents were displaced and received little humanitarian support in their plight. This film is a direct result of director Madi sneaking a camera inside the camp to document the everyday survival for four years after the conflict.

City of Sanctuary and De Montfort University Law students

This is an umbrella group of De Montfort post-graduate Law students and staff and volunteers from the British Red Cross and City of Sanctuary, focusing on tracking new evidence in failed asylum cases.

Faiza Nasir and Alison Birch

Faiza Nasir is a final year trainee clinical psychologist at the University of Leicester and has undertaken doctoral research with unaccompanied minors at the Centre Project. Alison Birch works at the Centre Project for unaccompanied minors. They have set up ‘Here Alone,’ an exhibition at the Charnwood museum, aiming to depict the hopes and fears of young people who have come to Leicestershire alone seeking safety from war or persecution. The interactive display outlines the findings of the research
and art work created by the young people with the help of a local artist.

There will be stalls and staff from local refugee and asylum services for delegates to directly engage with during the conference.

The conference is at the Peter Williams Lecture Theatre, in the Fielding Johnson South Wing. The University of Leicester map includes directions and parking information: www2.le.ac.uk/maps