Universities of Sanctuary Award

We have created an online training module designed to assist staff and students at Warwick to develop insights into the life of sanctuary students in the UK.

This training covers:

• Reasons for migration.
• What the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ mean, and the difference between these statuses.
• An overview of the UK asylum process, to understand the impacts on forced migrants.
• Discussion of attitudes to migration, to challenge negative stereotypes and how this can impact people.
• Introducing Warwick’s sanctuary scholarships and how we support students.
• Explaining Coventry’s City of Sanctuary status.

You can find the training on the 'What you can do' webpage which highlights a range of things staff and students can do to support a culture of safety, solidarity, and empowerment for people seeking sanctuary at, and beyond, Warwick.

We collect feedback from our students with lived experience of seeking sanctuary regularly and are continuing to develop ways to engage with students in the governance process.

In 2020, we undertook a detailed feedback collection process, including a survey and focus groups with sanctuary scholars. Feedback on our 2020 reaccreditation application recommended that we continue to collect this kind of feedback. To this end, we have adopted an annual feedback process to collect first-hand views from sanctuary scholars of the scholarships (amount, application process, etc.) and their wider experience whilst studying at Warwick (support available, sense of belonging, etc.).

This feedback is collated and considered by the Student Diverse Journeys Advisory Group - which also includes student representation, e.g., from Warwick STAR (Student Action for Refugees). The Advisory Group oversee all of our work in this area and provide direction to Warwick’s policy and practice to enhance access to higher education and experience for sanctuary seeking, carer, care leaver, and estranged students. The group takes a strategic approach to our sanctuary work, focusing on structural issues for all of these student groups. The group are continuing to develop engagement with and representation of students.

Research undertaken by our academic staff in collaboration with national partners continues to share people’s stories, expand our understanding of sanctuary issues, and influence policy in this area.

For example:

• In 2020, Professor Hannah Jones, Sociology, led a civic engagement research project bringing community groups together to help them to build a stronger, united front against the ‘hostile environment’. This work was included in our REF 2021 submission as an impact case study.
• In 2021, the Imperial War Museum in London held an exhibition – ‘Forced to Flee’ – exploring a century of refugee experiences, combining new research and real-life experiences. This exhibition included an animated audio installation based on ‘Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat’ research led by Professor Vicki Squire, Politics and International Studies, and a team of other colleagues from Warwick, ELIAMEP Athens, and University of Malta.
• Dr Reem Doukmak, Applied Linguistics, and artist Paul O’Donnell collaborated on a project using the medium of art to celebrate and explore the reintegration process for refugees and asylum seekers. In 2021, Reem and Paul talked about the work on the NVivo podcast, ‘Between the Data’.
• CAGE is a research centre based in Warwick’s Economics department, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council. CAGE conducts independent policy-driven research informed by history, culture, and behaviour. Since 2021, they have undertaken a range of work on sanctuary issues e.g., research projects, working papers, and blogs.
• In 2022, the ‘Finding Their Way: The Journey to University for Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Young People in Coventry’ report was published. This was based on research conducted by Dr Ursula Clayton, English, and Refugee Education UK, funded by Warwick’s Enhancing Research Culture Fund (underpinned by an award to the university from Research England). The report outlines the findings of the research’s aims to examine the barriers to HE for Coventry-based refugee and asylum-seeking young people, identify strategies for Warwick to address and reduce these barriers, and contribute to meaningful dialogue around peer- and community-led research approaches and partnerships between academia and voluntary sector organisations.

We are continuing to develop our support offering for sanctuary students and reviewing our processes to see where we can improve.

The research conducted by Dr Ursula Clayton, English, in partnership with Refugee Education UK discussed above identified barriers to education for refugee and asylum-seeking young people and made a series of recommendations for the University. One recommendation, to “work in partnership with refugee education experts to audit the sanctuary scholarship process, producing concrete recommendations for strengthening the model, including for reaching local refugees and asylum seekers” was completed in February 2024.

We were pleased to work with Refugee Education UK on this strategic review of our scholarships. During November and December 2023, REUK interviewed staff working on sanctuary at Warwick and ran focus groups with our sanctuary scholars, looked at our guidance and information, reviewed processes, and considered our management and governance structures for where and how sanctuary work fits in. The review helped us to identify areas of good practice – e.g., REUK noted that they were “impressed by the institutional commitment to the sanctuary scholarships by senior leaders” – and concrete actions which we can implement to improve the sanctuary scholarship process.

The recommendations from this review have informed the action plan outlined in our 2024 reaccreditation application.

We have provided sanctuary scholarships since 2015 and we are working with refugee charities locally, reaching out to local communities, to share information about accessing higher education and the scholarships available.

Our scholarship provision has enhanced over time, and currently we offer four undergraduate (and foundation year, if needed), three postgraduate taught, and two postgraduate research scholarships. There is more information on the Sanctuary Scholarships webpage.

Warwick's Widening Participation team have been working to create pathways to higher education for underrepresented and disadvantaged groups, including people seeking sanctuary, and share the support available. For example:

• Our Experience Warwick Partnership programme offers a variety of in-school and on-campus activities for local state schools in Coventry and Warwickshire. The programme aims to inspire and inform young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to progress to higher education through campus visits, academic taster sessions, in school mentoring, and opportunities for students to learn about the next steps from Year 11 onwards. Young people from sanctuary seeking backgrounds are prioritised for places on this programme.

• In partnership with Warwick STAR (Student Action for Refugees), we have held campus open days specifically for asylum seekers living in local hotels – working with Coventry City Council to reach out to people seeking sanctuary in the area and providing free transport from hotels to campus. Adults and children of all ages come along for a campus tour, information on options for higher education study and applying to university, information about our scholarships, and refreshments.

• Our Widening Participation Lifecycle Officer (Priority Groups), Emily Cannon, holds information meetings on the support she offers to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including how we support sanctuary students. See more on this below.

We have a named point of contact for undergraduate/postgraduate taught and postgraduate research sanctuary scholars, offering a range of support. In addition, we have been increasing the support available to students during their time at Warwick.

Our Widening Participation Lifecycle Officer (Priority Groups), Emily Cannon, provides support for undergraduate and postgraduate taught sanctuary scholars, and our Project Officer (Postgraduate Scholarships), Nicola Elis-Thomas, for postgraduate research sanctuary scholars. Emily and Nicola contact sanctuary scholars prior to enrolment to welcome them to Warwick and let them know about the support available. As the scholar's single point of contact, Emily and Nicola act as a central point for queries and support, liaising with a range of University support services as needed, e.g., finance, accommodation, wellbeing, etc.

In addition, we have been developing our wider support for sanctuary scholars:

• We are improving our accommodation support to help students feel at ease and at home when they join us. We have supplied all incoming undergraduate students with a UniKitOut pack containing 50-70 essential items to help make moving into university easy e.g., kitchenware, bedding, and towels.
• We have opened up networks and created more opportunities for sanctuary students to meet other students and make friends. Sanctuary scholars are invited to a reception at the beginning of the academic year to celebrate all of our students who have secured a highly prestigious and competitive scholarship from Warwick or an international funding body. Scholars said how much they appreciated being included in the event, for example one student said, “I met there the person who is now my closest friend at university […] Big thank you for that!”. Sanctuary scholars can also now join our Widening Participation Student Network, which brings together students from groups that are underrepresented at university, forming a community that is inclusive and peer led. All undergraduate sanctuary scholars are also invited to join Warwick Scholars, a programme of ongoing academic, personal, and professional opportunities throughout a student’s studies and after graduation.
• We have expanded our careers provision to better support sanctuary students. The Skills team are running a bespoke version for Warwick Scholars of Thrive, an interactive in-person programme, where students hear from inspirational speakers, and have the option to work with a mentor to support them on their personal development journey. Our undergraduate sanctuary scholars also get access to Rise, a 3-year programme of personalised careers support for disadvantaged students to help them to explore career options, develop key skills, widen professional networks, and secure top opportunities that suit them and them career interests. Our Careers team also run specific programmes of support for underrepresented student groups (which has been expanded to include sanctuary students) such as the Warwick Advance Internship Programme - including mentoring, identification of strengths, presentations with employers, feedback on applications, a work experience bursary, and more - and TeamWork - an online international experience programme where students collaborate in teams with students from universities around the world to work on a specified project.

We have continued to develop and adapt our admissions processes and have been able to support applicants with flexible admissions processes.

Our Admissions team review applicants individually and have been able to offer flexibility in the Admissions process e.g., offering an internal admissions assessment and departmental interview for students who are not able to provide documentation to prove their previous qualifications. We also offer the opportunity to apply for a sanctuary scholarship to students who apply through the clearing process.

We can accept a variety of English tests. Where students have exceptional circumstances that make taking an in-person test difficult, we offer Duolingo as an alternative and can provide a free code so that there is no fee for the applicant.

Furthermore, our contextual offer approach considers educational and individual context to provide a rounded understanding of academic potential and achievement, ensuring we fully consider talented applicants from all backgrounds. This means applicants will be made a conditional offer with reduced academic conditions (up to 2 grades lower than the standard offer) or removal of an additional requirement (e.g., removal of the STEP requirement for a Mathematics offer). We offer contextual admissions for sanctuary students with an immigration status which classifies them as a home student for fees purposes (predominantly refugees).

Gaps in learning are not usually a barrier, but where this is a challenge students can use our undergraduate sanctuary scholarship to study the one-year Warwick International Foundation Programme (IFP). Students on the IFP receive a guaranteed conditional offer if they decide to study an undergraduate course at Warwick once they finish the programme. For our sanctuary scholars, they will automatically receive the undergraduate scholarship when they progress to undergraduate level (they do not need to reapply).

We have engaged in a number of activities to share student experiences and promote awareness of sanctuary issues. In particular, we are inspired by our students who have chosen to share their stories and promote sanctuary issues.

We have a Refugee Week webpage to explain what it is, share details of events, inform people about Warwick’s sanctuary work, and share resources for learning more about sanctuary issues. Warwick STAR regularly hold events for Refugee Week. For example, in 2021, they ran a challenge to see how many people could live on the £37 a week which asylum seekers received in support from the Government and a speaker event with staff from STAR, Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre, and Warwick, plus a local artist. In addition, in September 2023, Warwick students were interviewed on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire for World Refugee Day to talk about their work helping refugees across Coventry.

We have also held events on sanctuary outside of Refugee Week. For example, in June 2021, the Resonate Festival included a month of events (in total, 17 events) focused specifically on the theme sanctuary. In 2022, the Warwick Politics Society held a panel discussion event on ‘The Migrant and Refugee Crisis’, including sharing ways that attendees could help locally and nationally. In 2023, Warwick STAR (Student Action for Refugees) had the human rights theatre group, ice&fire, come to Warwick to perform and lead their Asylum Monologues workshop – a first-hand account of the UK’s asylum system in the words of people who have experienced it. And, in April 2024, our Borders, Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Network (BREM) held a documentary short film screening and panel discussion about experiences of the UK asylum system.

Staff and students can also learn more about sanctuary issues in blogs written by our students, such as ‘My journey and what access means to me’, Hanna, April 2021; ‘Ukraine: One Year On’, Elya Aliieva, February 2023; ‘My Journey to Warwick’, Sam Pordale, June 2024. Alongside blogs from our current students, we are also keen to share the stories of former students, for example in September 2023, we published a blog from an alumnus – Attal Shams – on ‘A journey to be seen as human again’, talking about his experience of fleeing Afghanistan at 13.

Regional leadership is a key component of our 2030 Strategy; we are committed to driving the economic, social and cultural growth of our region and are working with local partners to be a driving force for good in the area.

For example:

• In June/July 2022, Dr Abimbola Ayorinde, Warwick Medical School, in partnership with Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre, ran a free Women’s Health Workshop for refugees and asylum seekers. This gave an opportunity to discuss women’s health issues with other women and learn how to get help when it is needed. Lunch and childcare were also provided.
• Since 2023, Enactus Warwick's Social Enterprise Division has run ‘The Gateway’, partnering with organisations like Coventry City Council and running workshops with local refugees, The Gateway aims to support development of language and communication skills, and to help people find employment. The Gateway has recruited over 150 student volunteers and developed partnerships with 10+ organisations. The project is currently expanding its activities by providing support in the areas of personal health and personal finance, through a combination of workshops and social events.

• Students in our Law school work in front-line advice services for the Warwick Law in the Community group’s Asylum Clinic. Students get involved in all stages of the asylum process including research, seeing clients, drafting representations for legal aid, and representing individuals and families in appeals and applications for judicial review.

• Since 2023, Professor Jane Bryan, Law, in partnership with a local community group, Education4All, has been running weekly Conversation and Coffee Classes, funded by an initial grant from our Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning and now from Warwick’s Regional Engagement budget. The classes give newly arrived communities (predominantly asylum seekers) an opportunity to practise their English and make connections. The classes are supported by students who volunteer to be conversational partners. They are held at a café in Coventry, with the intention of inviting newly arrived communities into ordinary spaces to break down barriers to belonging. Feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive, in the programme evaluation participants agreed that the classes have improved their confidence, independence, sense of belonging, and knowledge of the local area.

• Warwick STAR (Student Action for Refugees) also run Conversation Clubs, helping to teach English to refugees living in the local area, and Youth Support Clubs, helping young people with their university applications and language skills and giving a chance to socialise and play games with student volunteers. In December 2023, they also ran a new Secret Santa campaign, encouraging staff, students, and members of the public to donate gifts, given to participants of the Conversation Clubs, to spread some Christmas joy. This has been well received and is planned to be repeated.

We have been pleased to be able to increase our involvement in sanctuary work at a regional and national level, including supporting assessment of University of Sanctuary submissions.

For example:

• We have, for many years, worked with CARA (Council for At Risk) academics to offer two PhDs each year and place Fellows in academic departments for people around the world who need urgent help to escape from discrimination, persecution, violence or conflict. For example, in response to the escalation of violence in Israel and Gaza this year, we have been working actively to place an academic from Gaza at Warwick under the CARA scheme.
• Our BREM Network (Borders, Race, Ethnicity, and Migration) has built a very strong relationship with Coventry's City of Sanctuary group and regularly collaborates with them. For example, BREM has facilitated working between the City of Sanctuary group and Warwick Volunteers to support student placements with the group.
• We are always happy to speak to any university who contacts us for advice on becoming a University of Sanctuary. And, in 2022 and 2023, one of our Social Inclusion Managers, Michaela Hodges, was pleased to be asked to join the review panels for Aston University and the University of Birmingham’s University of Sanctuary applications.

• In 2024, Sam Pordale (one of our sanctuary scholars) has joined the Universities of Sanctuary Steering Group. Sam is a brilliant student and campaigner, and we are sure he will be a valuable asset to the group.

In addition to collaborating regionally and nationally, international collaboration and leadership is a key component of Warwick’s 2030 Strategy.

This year, we have updated our international strategy, deepening our commitment to global engagement at all levels of the University. For example: Warwick is a founding member of the EUTOPIA University Alliance, a group of 10 European universities building a long-term and transformative alliance of challenge-led, student-centred, entrepreneurial, and change-focused universities. Inclusion is integral to the EUTOPIA Alliance (it is what the ‘I’ in EUTOPIA stands for), and we play a prominent role in this stream of work. This work has resulted in the EUTOPIA Inclusion Framework. Co-created by staff and students at six of the institutions (including Warwick), the Framework summarises EUTOPIA’s agreed inclusion principles, as well as presenting case studies. We were pleased to contribute two case studies on supporting sanctuary students and share this good practice with our European partners.

Developed with input from over 500 staff and students, Warwick’s collective purpose is pointing the way ahead, so, together, we can make a better world. We are committed to the idea that each individual possesses the capacity to improve the world for everyone.

Internally, we have been supporting staff and students who are caught up in crises, for example, after the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria in 2023, our Wellbeing and Student Support (WSS) team reached out directly to students who may have been impacted, and a general message was communicate to all staff and students to convey our concern and remind them of support available through the WSS team for students, Employee Assistance Programme for staff, and our on-campus Chaplaincy for staff and students. In addition, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some of our Ukrainian staff established a Stand with Ukraine Network to co-ordinate efforts to volunteer time and donate items needed and signpost to external resources and professional support.

Regionally, we have been working closely with local authorities – in particular, Coventry City Council and Warwickshire County Council – to support newly arrived communities affected by recent international crises in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Sudan, e.g., collecting donations of books, laptops, and Chromebooks. In addition, following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in 2021, Warwick STAR (Student Action for Refugees) worked with Coventry City Council to offer English language support to people seeking sanctuary who were living in hotels locally.

Nationally, as detailed above, we have worked with CARA for many years and continue to do so, we have participated in a number of UK-wide conferences on how best to co-ordinate action on and support people affected by international crises - most recently a Friends of Birzeit University event (supporting the right to education and its role in the creation of a free and flourishing Palestine) and a symposium at the University of Glasgow on the conflict in Gaza - and in 2024, we have joined the UK HE Humanitarian Group working to advance, coordinate and catalyse support for forcibly displaced academics and students across UK higher education. In addition, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Warwick student Eldar Agayev founded the Warwick Ukrainian Society, working closely with 18 Ukrainian groups from other British universities including Oxford, Cambridge and University College London. The society’s mission is to foster a secure environment where members can join forces to support Ukraine's cause while offering essential resources to empower Ukrainian students on campus. The society has organised a range of activities, including engaging academic events featuring influential Ukrainian speakers, social gatherings that allowed Warwick students to immerse in Ukrainian culture, and fundraising for Ukrainian charities.

Internationally, in 2022, we endorsed a Scholars at Risk network appeal calling on European Governments and EU Institutions to take action for Afghanistan’s scholars, researchers, and civil society actors, for example by increasing resettlement quotas and creating expedited complementary legal pathways, as well as higher education-specific calls to establish a dedicated EU fellowship scheme and dedicated national fellowships for researchers and scholars at risk. Also in 2022, we signed a twinning agreement with Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics (NURE), Ukraine, as part of the #twinforhope initiative coordinated by Cormack Consultancy Group and the President’s Fund of Ukraine for Education, Science, and Sports with the support of Universities UK International. At the online ceremony, Professor Stuart Croft, Vice Chancellor, and Professor Igor Ruban, NURE’s Acting Rector laid the foundation for cooperating in science, education, and technology. NURE students were also offered places on several of Warwick’s summer programmes.

We are proud of the quantity and quality of work that our staff and students have done in response to international crises and the solidarity and support for people seeking sanctuary that our community has shown. To build on this, create a united response to these kinds of international crises, and enhance the impact we can have as an institution and a community, we are establishing a Global Conflict Response Working Group, chaired by Michael Scott, Pro-Vice Chancellor (International).