Doctoral Researcher
Contact details: WXW779@student.bham.ac.uk
Current status
Second year
Research topic
Displaced Syrian students and higher education in Lebanon and Jordan
Research summary
This project, through the concept of hope, aims to first, explore the displaced students’ hopes—both material expectations and cultural and spiritual aspiration toward higher education and their own futures—how do these expectations reflect in the plans and actions in their everyday life? Second, the project intends to examine the hopes that are generated through the current humanitarian practices —what kind of hopes are encouraged? How do the students experience the possibilities provided by various initiatives? Third, the project concerns the strategies and plans the students and their families devise in order to respond to the hopes and expectations they encountered. Through the three guiding aspects, this project aims to draw a more nuanced picture of the refugee students’ situations and to understand how the students receive and contest the humanitarian response toward their higher education needs (or lack thereof).
Research interests
- higher education access;
- forced-migration in the Arab world;
- foreign aid and humanitarianism in the Middle East;
- ethnographic methods;
- memories, futurity and the concept of hope
Research supervisors
Dr Dina Kiwan and Dr Gerasimos Tsourapas
Source of funding
Global Challenge Scholarship
Publications and conference presentations
Wen-Yu Wu (2018) Education in the Arab World, British Journal of Educational Studies, 66:3, 416-417, DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2018.1443723