Oudai Tozan
PhD
Director of Academic Programmes
Dr Oudai Tozan is the Director of Academic Programmes at the Refugee Led Research Hub. He oversees the Academic Pillar team to execute all core pillar offerings, including Pathways, Foundations, Graduate Horizons, and other enrichment programming. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2024, focusing on rebuilding Syria's higher education sector. He was also an associate lecturer in the Sociology of Education, Migration and Mobility, and Research Methods at Anglia Ruskin University.
Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Dr Tozan managed the Displaced Scholars Mentoring Program for the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW, Sydney. He has also founded the Syrian Academics and Researchers Network in the UK, an organisation dedicated to supporting exiled scholars. Previously, he co-founded and managed the International Syrian Association for Education Development, an international network of diaspora researchers and academics committed to aiding refugees in accessing education. He was also a member of the steering committee for the University of Sanctuary, a group of UK universities that support refugees and asylum seekers to access higher education in the UK
Dr Tozan’s research focuses on unpacking the role of education in conflict and peacebuilding and the role of diaspora/exiled academics in the education development in their countries of origin. His has published extensively on this topic and worked on several consultancy reports to the UK Government and EU on the political economy of the education sectors in Syria. He is currently working on his book on exiled academics with Cambridge University Press.