It is with regret that we have to decided to cancel the planned 40th Anniversary Conference, scheduled for 20th and 21st March at Keble College, in light of planned strike action across UK higher education.
The University and College Union (UCU) recently announced 18 days of strike action across 150 UK universities, including Oxford, during February and March. Around 70,000 members will strike. This week, the UCU has announced that the dates for the strikes will include 20th and 21st March. The strike action explicitly includes conferences. We recognise that a large proportion of the UK-based Refugee and Forced Migration Studies community are members of UCU, and others will not feel able to attend conferences or events in the context of the UCU strike.
The RSC will instead organise a series of smaller in-person and online events later in the year in order to suitably mark the RSC’s 40th anniversary.
We are incredibly saddened about the unavoidable cancellation of the conference and apologise for the inconvenience this will cause to people’s plans.
Photos: Top: Keble College, Oxford. Credit: © Keble College. Displaced persons from camps in Germany, Austria and Italy board an International Refugee Organisation chartered ship on their way to start a new life in the USA. Credit: © UNHCR. Bottom: Refugees wait to be processed at a registration centre at Kakuma camp, Kenya. Credit: © UNHCR/Anthony Karumba. Bahati Ghislain (Co-founder and Executive Director at Kintsugi) presents at the Refugee-Led Research Festival in Nairobi, May 2022. Credit: © RLRH/RSC.