University of Sanctuary

Our Sanctuary Café initiative has been set up to provide sanctuary seekers with the opportunity to socialise in our catering spaces by being able to access a free drink supported by the generosity of our café customers.

At all Newcastle University cafes and restaurants, staff, students and members of the public are able to pay for a drink to be donated to those from a sanctuary background, who are then able to redeem this when they visit.

We hope that by providing the opportunity to get a free drink, we can also offer an incentive for those who may feel isolated to meet new people, to network and to seek out new opportunities. Our University is well placed in the centre of Newcastle to help facilitate this interaction and support, and we are proud to do this as part of being a University of Sanctuary.

We offer sanctuary scholarships every year. These have been designed to enable students from asylum-seeker and refugee backgrounds to progress to higher level study.

We joined the CARA Scholars at Risk Universities Network in 2013-4 and has remained an active member since. We host three CARA fellows at any one time. CARA’s annual report for 2019/20 includes a statement of support from Newcastle’s Vice Chancellor and President, Professor Chris Day, as well as reflections on a CARA fellow working in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

Undergraduate modules that focus on sanctuary issues include:

• Refugees and Displacement: borders: campus, and asylum (Sociology)
• Issues in Global Migration and the Politics of Migration (Politics)
• Geographies of Development and Displacement (Geography)
  Fictions of Migration (English)
• Immigrant Second Language and Literacy Acquisition (Linguistics)
• Human Rights Law (Law)
• Global Public Health (Health)

PG taught curriculum includes examples such as:

• Migration, Mobilities and Inequalities (Sociology)
• Movement of persons in a global world (Law)
• PGCE Primary (Education)

Staff in Linguistics have developed six free online multi-lingual modules.

Our students engage with sanctuary seekers through diverse volunteering opportunities. Examples here include:

• North East Solidarity and Teaching (NEST), a multi-award winning student-led project at Newcastle University Student’s Union.
• Students in Dentistry participate in a student group called Brush Up where they seek to spread positive messages about oral hygiene with diverse communities including specifically refugee community groups.

We regularly work with students undertaking doctoral studies with sanctuary seekers. Recent doctoral theses have focused on:

• The rights of Iraqi refugees
• Young refugees and homemaking in Glasgow

We host regular Insights Public Lectures that are free and open to the public and to all members of our community. Recent lectures about sanctuary issues include:

• Dr Jen Bagelman virtual lecture - ‘Documenting undocumented motherhood’.
• Hashi Mohammed’s lecture - ‘People like us – what it takes to make it in modern Britain.’

• Newcastle Forum for Human Rights and Social Justice regularly host conferences and seminars on topics relating to sanctuary including engagement with sanctuary seekers.
• Researchers in Applied Linguistics co-ordinated a European-wide project for marginalised migrants – including refugees – to learn English and improve their digital literacy through cooking. Lingacuisine successfully shared this work in six European languages
• The Centre for Research Excellence on Heritage was launched in February 2020 with a lecture from Linda Norris who talked about the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.
• Social researchers are currently working on research about refugee youth and public space in collaboration with a number of local refugee community organisations. The research team have shared the findings of this work in Discover Society.
• Digital civics researchers have worked on developing digital platforms for the safe and secure resettlement of Syrian refugees, including sharing what has been learnt in the process of doing this collaborative work.

Our Engagement and Place Strategy focuses on ‘improving the economy, health and social wellbeing, and cultural richness of the places in which we operate.’ Some examples here include:

• Working with the West End Refugee Service, colleagues in Politics collaborated on creating videos about the asylum process and about the lived experiences of refugees in 2012-13. More recently, colleagues in Sociology to helped WERS celebrate turning 20 – see this webinar and blog.
• As founding partners of Tyne and Wear Citizens, we have worked collaboratively on making Newcastle a safer place to seek sanctuary. This included winning a Hate Crime Charter on Public Transport.
• The Hatton Gallery have the ‘Home and Belonging: Walk of Sanctuary’ project with a series of short digi-films.

All Newcastle University colleagues and students are welcome to access this short online course from City of Sanctuary. ‘Myth Buster; Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ is aimed at anyone wanting to get a simple overview of migration in Newcastle.

It provides a basic overview of:

• the work happening in Newcastle in relation to migration
• common terms: what are the differences between, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees
• some of the issues that may face asylum seekers and refugees in Newcastle
• some facts about migration, challenging some of the myths that exist in the migration debate
• where to go and who to contact if you would like further information, or to support the work with asylum seekers and refugees in Newcastle

You will need to sign up to access the course, selecting Newcastle University and ‘other’ as your job title.

City of Sanctuary Training Course

Hello. My name is Ana, and I would be delighted to support you through your time at Newcastle University.

Having worked in refugee charities for the past four years, I have a broad understanding of the challenges of navigating the asylum process and integrating into a new country.

University is such an exciting and important moment in life, but it can also be challenging - especially if you are concerned about a pending asylum claim, unsure about your rights and what support is available, or worried about family members and the situation in your country of origin.

Maybe you have not had the space and support to process painful experiences and how these might have affected you.

Or maybe you are facing challenges connected to adapting to a new environment.

Whether you would benefit from practical and/or emotional support, I am here to help you making the most out of your experience at university.

Email: sanctuarysupport@ncl.ac.uk