SEMINARS & EVENTS

UPCOMING EVENTS

These events are free to all. Most are hybrid, so they can be joined online or in person. Please contact Emily LeRoux-Rutledge at Emily.LeRoux-Rutledge@uwe.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

Wednesday, 21 January 2026, 9:00am - 5:00pm – Hosts: Sam Parker, Emily LeRoux-Rutledge

Asylum Seeker and Refugee Wellbeing Conference  

The annual Asylum Seeker and Refugee Wellbeing Conference is a free conference hosted on UWE's Frenchay Campus, which brings together people working to support the mental health and wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees in Bristol, and surrounding areas. The conference is an opportunity for practitioners to step back from the day-to-day co-ordination and delivery of services for the wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees, and to think more broadly about some of the challenges, successes, and recent research developments in the sector. The conference draws on both the expertise of those organisations working to support asylum seeker and refugees in Bristol (e.g. from the voluntary sector, NHS and local government), as well as on the expertise of academics at UWE and beyond, who can bring new ideas and developments to organisations for their consideration and reflection. For more information,  please email asrwconference@uwe.ac.uk.

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PAST EVENTS 

2024/25

Wednesday, 11 June 2025, 1:00pm - 2:00pm (4D005) – Ryan Lutz

From Harm to Hope: Examining Migrant Integration Policies and Practices in the City of Bristol

Integration has been a heavily critiqued term with its history of creating exclusionary and racialized policies is well documented (Favell, 2022). Despite this, the term has remained and become stronger. The restrictive approach towards migrants has made way for a worrying trend of decreasing social rights, political inclusion and civil liberties for the citizens that migrants are supposed to be integrating into (de Noronha, 2022). Findings from co-produced mixed methods research, this research attempts to show that the lens of social harm (Hillyard et al., 2004) allows for a bottom-up approach to integration and investigates the efficacy of localized integration policies and how much they can make up for failures at the national level.  

Ryan Lutz is a PhD student in Social Policy at the University of Bristol’s School for Policy Studies in the UK. His research looks at integration, social harm, and the binary between citizens and migrants. Previously Ryan was an Assistant Manager of Research and Strategy at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, received his master's in public administration from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.  

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Wednesday, 14 May 2025, 1:00pm - 2:00pm (2A027) – Trang Trần

Am I happier than you are? It depends on when you ask: Reflections on the need for longitudinal studies on the well-being of international students

If an international student speaks English as their first language (EFiL) instead of as an additional language (EAL), would their predicted well-being be higher compared to their EAL peers? English language proficiency has been shown to significantly predict various indicators of mental health among international students. Our longitudinal data shows that during early arrival, EAL students scored significantly higher than their EFiL peers on their psychological well-being measures. While this may seem unexpected, it does align with some previous findings suggesting that UK home students' well-being indicators are significantly lower than those of their international peers. However, further analysis of longitudinal data (collected at 3 time points over 18 months) showed that the trajectory of psychological well-being for EFil and EAL international students was reversed, with EFiL students' wellbeing improving over time, while their EAL peers' well-being score decreased over time. Despite the small sample, these findings invite further reflection on the importance of longitudinal studies, or at the very least, the need to contextualise psychological well-being in the timing of students' journey, alongside other contextual factors.

Trang Trần is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at UWE Bristol. Her research interests include international students' coping strategies and psychological well-being.

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Wednesday, 2 April 2025, 1:00pm - 2:00pm (3S803) – Sam Parker

Supportive local policy, hostile national policy: the integration experiences of refugees and asylum seekers in Wales.

In 2001, following the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, four towns and cities in Wales became asylum dispersal locations and, as such Government has devolved responsibility in many social policy areas that impact upon refugee and asylum seeker integration. This seminar begins by outlining developments in UK immigration and asylum policy and highlights the ways in which successive Westminster governments have introduced legislation creating a ‘hostile environment’ designed to deter asylum seekers from entering the UK and encourage failed asylum seekers to leave the UK. Such policies have restricted the civil and social rights of asylum seekers whilst simultaneously the Westminster government has focused upon policies for the integration of those granted refugee status only. This seminar reports on the findings from interviews conducted with 19 refugees and asylum seekers in Wales, where in contrast to Westminster, the Welsh Government see integration as a process beginning on day one of arrival in Wales. The data are taken from a project focusing on refugee and asylum seeker integration in Wales and demonstrates how policies introduced in recent years have led to restrictions on the day-to-day lives of asylum seekers in Wales and their ability to integrate. It argues that in a system of multi-level governance, the Welsh Government’s vision of integration remains problematic when immigration and asylum remain matters reserved to the Westminster Government. It highlights ways in which Welsh Government policy diverges from that in England and argues that further use of devolved powers could be made to facilitate integration in Wales.

Sam Parker is a Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at UWE Bristol and has previously worked at Cardiff University and Birmingham City University. Sam is also Chair of Trustees for Space4U Cardiff, a small community organisation that supports newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers in Cardiff.

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Wednesday, 12 March 2025, 1:00pm - 2:00pm (4D005) – Artjoms Ivlevs

Support for ‘replacement migration’? Region-level demographics and attitudes towards immigration in Europe

Does demographic decline make Europeans more pro-immigration? Our longitudinal, regional-level analysis, drawing on the 2008-2019 European Social Survey (278 regions in 22 countries) and the 1999-2021 German Socio-Economic Panel (16 federal states, 96 planning regions), suggests that people become more favourable to immigration as regional birth rates fall and ageing indicators worsen. While this result would support the logic of replacement migration, we also shed light on the role of the natives/foreigners balance in driving this relationship and tentatively conclude that the link between demographic decline and attitudes towards immigration could also be explained by group conflict theory.

Artjoms Ivlevs is Professor of Economics at the Bristol Business School (UWE Bristol) and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). His research interests include migration and subjective well-being, and more recently tourism. Artjoms is an applied microeconomist working with large-scale survey data; much of his work focuses on the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

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Wednesday, 12 February 2025, 1:00pm - 2:00pm (3S803) – Nigel Williams

Migration and Memory, how we prepare for and cope with loss and change

After offering case examples about how migration is anticipated, and losses are worked with this session will help participants to develop their own sense of the similarities and differences between intergenerational memory running in families, groups and organisations and longer-term transgenerational memory located in culture and bodies in deeper time. Using these cases and some of our own experiences we will explore how to go about addressing first, second, third generation (and beyond) responses to the challenges of migration as a complex multifaceted experience extended in time.

Nigel Williams is a Visiting Fellow in Psychology at the University of the West of England and is author of Mapping Social Memory a Psychotherapeutic and Psycho-Social Approach, in the Palgrave Psychosocial series and has recently published a chapter on generational memory in Studying Generations, Bristol University Press edited by Helen Kinston and Jennie Bristow.

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Wednesday, 22 January 2025 9:00am - 5:00pm – Hosts: Emily LeRoux-Rutledge, Sam Parker, Charlotte Flothmann 

Asylum Seeker and Refugee Wellbeing Conference  

The annual Asylum Seeker and Refugee Wellbeing Conference is a free conference hosted on UWE's Frenchay Campus, which brings together people working to support the mental health and wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees in Bristol, and surrounding areas. The conference is an opportunity for practitioners to step back from the day-to-day co-ordination and delivery of services for the wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees, and to think more broadly about some of the challenges, successes, and recent research developments in the sector. The conference draws on both the expertise of those organisations working to support asylum seeker and refugees in Bristol (e.g. from the voluntary sector, NHS and local government), as well as on the expertise of academics at UWE and beyond, who can bring new ideas and developments to organisations for their consideration and reflection. The 2025 programme is available here. For more information,  please email asrwconference@uwe.ac.uk.

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Wednesday, 11 December, 2024, 1:00pm - 2:00pm – Elizabeth White

Child Refugees, Child Migrants and Children's Rights, 1969- 1989

This seminar examines the internationalisation of the rights of child refugees and migrants from the 1960s to 1980s. It looks at debates between state actors, international bodies and NGOs on protection for child refugees and migrants in the creation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child from in the 1970s and 1980s. It will also outline campaigns by transnational leftwing groups in the  'radical 1970s' to promote, create and imagine new rights for Palestinian and Vietnamese refugee children, as well as for the children of migrants and guestworkers in Europe. 

Dr Elizabeth White is an Associate Professor of Global History at UWE. She has published widely on histories of childhood, humanitarianism and human rights. She is currently writing a monograph called Creating the Rights of the Child, 1945-1989: Human Rights, the Socialist Bloc and the Global Cold War, based on research carried out with the generous support of a BA/Leverhulme Small Grants Award (2022/24). 

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Wednesday, 20 November 2024, 1:00pm - 2:00pm – Phil Cole

Development Displacement: Who Pays for 'Progress'?

In discussions of forced displacement, the focus tends to be on those displaced by conflict and, increasingly, disaster. However, a major cause of displacement is development, in the forms of dams and other infrastructure projects. These projects are extremely destructive, as there is no possibility of the displaced ever returning to their homes, and is often extremely violent, accompanied by the assassinations of those who attempt to resist, and, in some cases, massacres. But the dominant conception of protection is sanctuary membership of another state, and as this is not suitable as a form of protection for those displaced by development, they are left out of political discussions about the rights of the displaced. Phil Cole asks what happens to our conception of forced displacement and the idea of protection if we include development displacement in the debate.

Phil Cole is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, and author of Global Displacement in the 21st Century: Towards an Ethical Framework published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022. His other books include Philosophies of Exclusion: Liberal Political Philosophy and Immigration, and Debating the Ethics of Immigration: Is There a Right to Exclude? (co-authored with Christopher Heath Wellman).

2023/24

Wednesday, 4 January 2024 -  10:00-17:00 - Asylum Seeker and Refugee Wellbeing Conference 2024

The annual Asylum Seeker and Refugee Wellbeing Conference is an event that brings together people working to support the mental health and wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees in Bristol, and surrounding areas. The conference is an opportunity to step back from the day-to-day co-ordination and delivery of services for the wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees, and to think more broadly about some of the challenges, successes, and recent research developments in the sector. The conference draws on both the expertise of those organisations working to support asylum seeker and refugees in Bristol (e.g. from the voluntary sector, NHS and local government), as well as on the expertise of external speakers and academics, who can bring new ideas and developments to organisations for their consideration and reflection. Last year's conference was attended by 109 delegates from 24 organisations.  The 2024 programme is available here.

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Wednesday, 29 November 2023 -  10:00-11:00 - Ilana Mountian (UWE Bristol, Psychology)

Immigration and gender: critical aspects for health services

This seminar aims at discussing some aspects regarding immigration and health and mental health, focusing on gender and sexuality. Dr Mountian will present some aspects of her research conducted in Sao Paulo on public health services and migration from 2015 to 2020. The debate centres on critical aspects regarding gender and sexuality within migration and how it operates in health services. Within this debate, two main aspects are highlighted: firstly, the importance of a constant reflexivity in working with minoritised groups, and, secondly, the need to take into account the social context for the analysis of health and mental health issues.

Ilana Mountian has recently joined UWE as a Senior Lecturer on Constructing Gender in Society. She has conducted research in the area of migration since 2005. She is a member of the Discourse Unit and the International Lacanian Psychoanalytic Forum.

2022/23

February 24, 10-11.30am: Phil Cole (UWE Bristol, Politics and International Relations)

BOOK LAUNCH: Global Displacement in the 21st Century: Towards an Ethical Framework

March 2, 10-11.30am: Ellen Hughes (UWE, Business School)

UK internal migration and the creative class

31 March, 10-11.30am: Vlad Mychnenko (University of Oxford)

Understanding forced internal displacement in Ukraine: insights and lessons for today’s crises

4 November, 10-11.30am: Tetiana Ostapchuk (Independent Researcher) 

Graphic Narratives on Migration and War: European and Ukrainian Projects in 2010s - 2020s

2021/22

February 9, 10-11.30am: Jon Mulholland (UWE Bristol, Psycho-Social Studies) and Louise Ryan (London Met)

Revisiting French Migrants in London: Using Longitudinal Research to Study the Impact of Brexit on Differentiated Embedding over Time. 

March 9, 10-11.30am: Ella Barcley (UWE, Sociology)

Medical tourism's collateral damage: How fears of NHS exploitation have led to the restriction of rights for irregular migrants in the UK 

April 6, 10-11.30am: Zuzanna Brunarska (Centre of Migration Research, U Warsaw)

Does past involuntary immobility in the family affect people’s current emigration intentions?

October 22, 10-11.30am: Maria Stadnicka (UWE Bristol, Psycho-Social Studies)

Pandemia in Utero: The Story of the First British Lockdown for Romanian Diaspora with Experience of Past Socio-Cultural Trauma  

November 17, 10-11.30am: Professor Sarah Leonard (UWE Bristol, Politics and International Relations)

De-centring the Securitisation of Asylum and Migration in the European Union: Securitisation, Vulnerability and the Role of Turkey

2020/21

January 20, 10-11.30am

  Quang Evansluong (University of Gothenburg) and Marcela Ramirez-Pasillas (Jönköping University)

  The role of family social capital in immigrants’ entrepreneurial opportunity creation processes

February 10, 10-11.30am

  Ali Zalme

  Home and Sense of Belonging among Iraqi-Kurds in the UK 

March 3, 10-11.30am

  Christina Efthymiadou (UWE Bristol)

  Creative multilingualism: From practice to research to education

March 24, 10-11.30am

  Emma Musty

  For whose protection? The long-term impact of short-term COVID-19 policies on detained and geographically restricted people in Greece, a grass roots perspective.

April 21, 10-11.30am

  Phil Cole (UWE Bristol)

  Climate Refugees: The Very Idea?

Wednesday, October 28, 10-11.30am

   Everyday humanitarians: refugee-refugee hosting in protracted urban displacement

   Zoe Jordan (Oxford Brooks)

Wednesday, November 11, 10-11.30am

   Negotiating Refugee Identity in the face of Negative Social Representations: Lessons for Germany’s Integration Policy during the European Migration “Crisis”  

   Emily Le Roux-Rutledge (UWE Bristol) and Carmen Lienen (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

Wednesday, November 25, 10-11.30am

   Family Migration, Separation and Communication – Visualising the Hostile Immigration Environment

   Emma Agusita (UWE Bristol)

2019/20 

Wednesday, February 5

"Family Migration, Separation and Communication – Visualising the Hostile Immigration Environment", Emma Agusita (UWE Bristol)

Time: 10-11.30am; Place: 3X107, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, March 25 

"Everyday humanitarians: refugee-refugee hosting in protracted urban displacement", Zoe Jordan (Oxford Brooks)

Time: 10-11.30am; Place: 5X103, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, April 22

"Governing healthy migrant families: migrants’ and health workers’ views and experiences of health and wellbeing services for pre-school children in the UK" , Stuart McClean (UWE, Public Health)

Time: 10-11.30am; Place: 3X108, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, October 2

"How does migrant travel behaviour change over time?", Jason Snelling (UWE Bristol, Geography)

  Time: 1-2.30pm; Place: 6X270, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, November 6 

"Revisiting the securitisation approach: theoretical, empirical and methodological implications for migration research",  Denny Pencheva (University of Bristol, Politics and Policy studies) 

  Time: 1-2.30pm; Place: 6X270, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, December 4

“Creative collaborations: Working with teachers and creative artists to support children’s developing languages and identities in schools”, Jane Andrews (UWE Bristol, Education)

 Time: 1-2.30pm; Place: 6X270, Frenchay Campus

2018/19

Wednesday, January 30 

  Migration: is there any point in improving the evidence base for policy?  Ann Singleton (University of Bristol)  

  Time: 1.30-3pm; Place: 6X100, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, February 13

  Migrant Extractability: Global Reproduction and the politics of women's bodies in Europe.  Michal Nahman (UWE Bristol)

  Time: 1.30-3pm; Place: 7X200, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, March 20

  Deathscapes and Diversity: Planning for migrants’ and minorities’ bodily remains, ritual and remembrance practice.  Katie McClymont (UWE Bristol)

  Time: 1.30-3pm; Place: 6X100, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, April 3

  Politics and affect - a Brexit genealogy.  Dr Lita Crociani-Windland (UWE Bristol, Psycho-Social Studies) 

  Time: 1.30-3pm; Place: 6X100, Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, May 2

   In Search of the Political: Mobility, Migration and Citizenship. Bridget Anderson (University of Bristol)

   Time: 2-4 pm; Place: 3B20 Frenchay Campus

Thursday, April 11

   Creating the Category of Refugee: The Development of the International Refugee Regime, 1921-1934.  Elizabeth White (UWE Bristol)

   Time: 2-4 pm; Place: 4C24 Frenchay Campus

Wednesday, February 21

   International Tourist Arrivals and Attitudes towards Immigration: Evidence from Europe. Artjoms Ivlevs (UWE Bristol) and Ian Smith (UWE Bristol)

   Framing the Refugee. Phil Cole (UWE Bristol)

   Time: 2-4pm; Place: 4C24 Frenchay Campus