University of Sanctuary
In September 2019, St Andrews became the second University of Sanctuary in Scotland, in recognition of our commitment to ensuring St Andrews is a welcoming, safe and supportive environment for scholars and students seeking sanctuary in the UK.
A celebration event was held in March 2020 to officially award University of Sanctuary status to St Andrews.
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The St Andrews Sanctuary Scholarship supports undergraduate and postgraduate applicants who are seeking sanctuary in the UK.
2023 entry
St Andrews is committed to attracting the very best students, and to providing a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone in our community. The University is pleased to offer a Sanctuary Scholarship, specifically designed to support undergraduate and postgraduate applicants who are seeking sanctuary in the UK.
Up to 12 scholarships are available for UG, PGT and PGR. Applicants interested in apply can find more information on the Sanctuary Scholarship page.
Online Sanctuary Scholarship for MSc TESOL
This award covers all tuition costs for an online MSc TESOL programme (including MSc TESOL with a specialism) at the University of St Andrews. More information can be found on our Scholarships pages.
Other scholarships
St Andrews Education for Palestine – Scholarship scheme (STEPS)
STEPS (St Andrews Education for Palestinian Students) was established in January 2011 as an independent charitable foundation to provide funding for Palestinian students at the University of St Andrews.
This scholarship, co-funded by STEPS and the University of St Andrews, will provide funding for up to two Palestinian students to undertake a one-year postgraduate course of study.
Applicants interested in applying to STEPS can find out more information on our Scholarship pages.
Access and outreach
To learn more about other supported pathways for studying at St Andrews, please visit the access and outreach page.
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Current students who have been awarded a University of St Andrews Sanctaury Scholarship can contact sanctuary@st-andrews.ac.uk with any queries.
The Global Office also holds weekly student consultation hours Monday from 14:00-16:00 during the academic year. Please book a virtual appointment if you would like chat with a member of the Global Office team.
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The Sanctuary Operations Group was established in 2019. It brings together key colleagues from around the University to co-ordinate and support activities in relation to our University of Sanctuary status.
The objectives of the Sanctuary Operations Group are to:
- Co-ordinate relevant information sessions/ training for staff and students on what it means to be a University of Sanctuary and issues related to the provision of support for Sanctuary scholars.
- Promote and support Sanctuary events at the University, liaising with the Students’ Association, local community and external stakeholders.
- Maintain an oversight of legislation and policy in this area and the implications for St Andrews and our communities, and make recommendations to the Principal’s Office as appropriate.
- Support the University’s membership of the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara).
- Review feedback from Sanctuary scholars and enhance their welcome and experience at St Andrews wherever possible.
- Maintain an oversight of the scholarship provision and support arrangements for Sanctuary scholars and seek external support for Sanctuary initiatives.
- Ensure news about related research, teaching and other initiatives are communicated internally and externally as appropriate.
The Sanctuary Operations Group also works closely with the University of St Andrews Refugee and Forced Mobility Network and Refugee Action St Andrews (RASA) to share information more widely.
For further information about the Group and how you can support Sanctuary activities, please contact the Global Office.
Forced migration research and teaching
There is a broad range of research and teaching related to forced migration and/or (forced) migrants being carried out at the University. Examples are detailed below.
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PhD student
Research interests: diaspora politics, humantriansm, activism, IDPs and transnational solidarity, the political economy of Diaspora, forced/involuntary migration and displacement.
Research projects: Ph.D. Fellow @Center for Syrian Studies, and Sanctuary/Cara funded scholar. My Ph.D. research is focused on diaspora politics in conflict settings, humantriansm, activism, IDPs and transnational solidarity, the political economy of the Syrian Diaspora, its historical evolution, and the formation of the political diaspora. Part of the research is on forced/involuntary migration and displacement before and after 2011 in Syria. I'm involved in several projects and research on migration and protection in Syria, Iraq, and other fragile states in the MENA region. Founding member of the Syrian Academics Network in the UK & fellow at the Syrian Center for Policy Research (Beirut)
Research Centres/Institutes: Center for Syrian Studies
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Lecturer in Latin American Studies, School of Modern Languages
Research interests: Cultural representations of the Mexico-USA border; contemporary Latin American literature (representations of migration, exile, other displacements); travel writing; testimonial literature; women travellers and writers; women's autofiction; literary journalism and Hispanic media
Research projects: My current research focuses on Latin American women travellers and writers, from the 1960s onwards. It departs from the exploration of the role of memory and imagination within the context of the social revolutions, particularly in Central America and the Caribbean.
Research Centres/Institutes: Centre for Amerindian Studies (CAS)
Teaching: SP4020 Women in motion: Gender and mobilities in Latin American contemporary literature
Find out more about Dr Liliana Chávez-Díaz
Email: lgcd1@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Department of Social Anthropology
Research: My research focuses on Latin American migration, gender and social inequality. I have studied Latin American diasporas in different countries in order to understand political and ethical responses to structural inequality. I am interested in showing how various social, gendered, ethical and cultural practices inform those responses which often facilitate methods and strategies of coping and persevering. My work has focused on the analysis of care and ethics in different settings. My doctoral work included the analysis of Latin American women’s lives while working as domestic and sex workers in London. Here is studied how socio-economic conditions, violence and structural inequality push migrants to move from the Global South to the Global North. I then broaden the field of my research, still with a strong focus on care, inequality and migration while studying an anti-eviction social movement in Madrid. I have also been involved in a project concerned with inequality, care and cooperation among Hispanic migrants in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My various field sites offer a comparative approach to the study of migration and people’s (particularly women) efforts and abilities to create possibilities for themselves in the face of precarious realities. My lens on care and ethics has illuminated everyday day practices of resistance but also structural conditions of inequality.
Teaching: While working as a lecture in Oxford University I taught a course for the MSc in Migration Studies and the MSc in Anthropology titled Intersectionalites: gender, sexuality, race and mobility. The course begins by providing students with a theoretical grounding in the literature on gender and migration and the ways in which the state, work, family as well as intersectional identities shape gender. It explores the links that exist between these analytical categories through an anthropological analysis of intimate labour markets, legal statuses, middle-class migrations, love and romance, queer migrations and masculinities. The course engages with postcolonial, queer and race studies in order to approach the study of gender and migration in a critical way. Adopting a comparative approach, this course draws on ethnographic examples from various regions in the developed and the developing world.
I am the director of CAS (Centre for Amerindian and Latin American Studies) and I will be leading a seminar series on Race and Racism in Latin America during the next academic year with the participation of scholars from various parts of the world.
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Professor of French and African Studies, School of Modern Languages
Research interests: Francophone Africa; genocide; Rwanda; literature and testmionies; colonial métis; postcolonialism; decoloniality
Research projects: Currently working on stories of colonial Métis (children born of Belgian colonial men and Rwandan women) who were forcibly removed to Belgium in 1950s and put up for adoption.
Find out more about Professor Nicki Hitchcott.
Email: nmh2@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Senior Lecturer, School of Classics
Research interests: Visualising War and Peace (including forced migration, as a legacy of conflict.
Research projects: With funding from Imperial War Museums, I have been running a project on Visualising Forced Migration. This has involved: commissioning artist Diana Forster to create a brand new artwork, recounting a historic forced migration during WWII, with the aim of generating conversation about past and present displacement and refugee experiences; I have also been gathering stories of forced migration from antiquity to the present day (via interviews, blogs, podcasts) which we feature on our website; additionally, I have interviewed a range of artists, photographers, linguists, writers etc about habits of representing forced migration in different media. Our art exhibition is at Kirkcaldy Galleries from 4th Feb to 14th May 2023, then it transfers to the Wardlaw Museum from 25th May 2023 until 7th Jan 2024. We are exploring other venues after that date.
Find out more about Dr Alice König
Email: arw6@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Professor, School of Geography and Sustainable Development
Research interests: demography, migration, fertility, immigrants, descendants, life-course
Research projects: MigrantLife project (2019–2024) Understanding Life Trajectories of Immigrants and Their Descendants in Europe and Projecting Future Trends. This project investigates how employment, housing and family trajectories evolve and interact in the lives of immigrants and their descendants in the UK, France, Germany and Sweden; and how factors related to a societal context, an early life context and critical transitions shape their life histories. The study will project their future life trajectories using innovative computer simulation techniques, considering the main life domains and diversity between and within immigrant groups. The project will exploit large-scale longitudinal data from the four countries to deepen our understanding of the relationships between the three life domains, and the causes of less and more successful life trajectories among immigrants and their descendants. This project will show whether the current heterogeneity between and within immigrant and minority groups vanishes over time or rather persists, suggesting an increasing diversity of European societies.
Find out more about Professor Hill Kulu.
Email: hill.kulu@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Learning and Engagement Manager, Libraries and Museums
Research interests: Social integration, wellbeing
Research projects: Common Ground - a project that partners with Fife Council's ESOL department, pairing ESOL learners of migrant and refugee backgrounds with secondary school pupils from SIMD40 postcodes to create an exhibition in the Wardlaw Museum. Focused on wellbeing, social integration and skills development. Currently funded by Museums Galleries Scotland.
Email: erml@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Professor, School of Modern Languages
Research interests: Chinese diaspora, postcolonialism, decoloniality, migration, forced repatriation, asylum seekers
Research projects: My book 第八位中國商人同消失咗嘅海員/The Eighth Chinese Merchant and the Disappeared Seamen published in August 2022 was the result of long and in-depth research into the 1945-1947 forced repatriation of Chinese seamen from the UK. I am currently interested in the integration of BN(O) visa scheme migrants from Hong Kong, and mainland Chinese asylum seekers who seek to remain in the UK.
Teaching: CN5004 Cultural Expression in the Chinese Diaspora
Other initiatives: Collaboration with Migration Policy Scotland – Participant: MPS Event: Hong Kongers in Scotland, 10 March 2023. Moderator, University of St-Andrews Future Scotland Series Public Forum – Hong Kong Migrants in Scotland: Opportunities and Challenges, 9th March. Expert for Chinese asylum speaker appeal against Home Office refusal of permission to remain; the appellant is in danger of religious persecution if returned to China (February-March 2023).
Find out more about Professor Gregory Lee
Email: gbl1@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations
Research interests: Activism, active citizenship, participatory research with asylum seekers and refugees
Research projects: In collaboration with Cara, set up the Sanctuary programme, including the Sanctuary Fellowship, at Lancaster University before coming to St Andrews (see: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/giving/lancaster-sanctuary-fellowship/). Co-developed Mobilise! an online active citizenship course with asylum seekers and refugees, which aimed to develop confidence and skills in engaging social and political life (see: https://www.rememberingresistance.com/mobilise.html). Learning resources drew on materials collected in a previous project on social movements in the region (see www.rememberingresistance.com). The course has been run by a number of community organisations working with AS&R in Lancaster and Sheffield.
Find out more about Dr Sarah Marsden.
Email: sm992@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations
Dr Fiona McCallum Guiney is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations. She is trained as a political scientist and is a specialist on Middle Eastern Christianity. Dr McCallum Guiney led an interdisciplinary project entitled ‘Defining and Identifying Middle Eastern Christian Communities in Europe’ (DIMECCE) 2013-16. With partners from Denmark, Poland and Belgium, the project was awarded a grant of 785,851 Euros from the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA). Using the case studies of the Coptic Orthodox, Assyrians/Syriacs and Iraqi Christians in the UK, Denmark and Sweden, the project explored the internal dynamics of these communities, engagement with wider society and transnational interactions especially with Middle Eastern countries. The project team worked with government agencies and non-state actors working with migrants and refugees. For more information, see the project website.
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Senior Lecturer, Geography and Sustainable Development
Research interests: migration
Research projects: I have previously been involved on research on climate change and forced migration.
Teaching: GG3234 Migration & Transnationalism
Find out more about Dr David McCollum
Email: dm82@St-andrews.ac.uk
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Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology
Stavroula Pipyrou is a Social Anthropologist working on minority politics, particularly among the Grecanici – a Greek linguistic minority in South Italy who trace their roots back to antiquity. Her monograph “The Grecanici of Southern Italy: Governance, Violence, and Minority Politics (2016) is the first Anglophone study of the minority. She pioneered a theory of “Fearless Governance” that describes overlapping and contradictory systems of power and authority that enable the Grecanici to achieve political representation through the EU and UNESCO, state policy, civic associations and family networks. Leading from her interest in how political anthropology captures the lived-experience of minorities, she has completed an innovative mixed-method project on the long-term impacts of child displacement in South Italy. After floods in 1951/53, children were deliberately displaced by organisations on both the Left and the Right to other parts of Italy. This story, largely absent from Italian history textbooks, has led to an influential theory of how violence is inherent in humanitarian processes. In subsequent publications, she argues that silences associated with child-displacement are directly related to Cold War politics in Italy and beyond and build the political structure of the European project. Stavroula is the founding director of the Center for Minorities Research.
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Lecturer, School of International Relations
Research interests: postcolonial, marxist and queer theory; activism around gender, sexuality, race, class, caste
Teaching: IR4579: Race, Caste and the Making of the Modern World; IR5417: Political Theory of Race and Caste
Find out more about Dr Rahul Rao
Email: rr213@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Reader, School of English
Research interests: Old English language and literature, source study, early medieval literary history, Academic English
Research projects: I've been working as a mentor for Cara, the Council for At-Risk Academics. My mentee and I, plus three other senior academics, organised a webinar for Cara this month. The topic was Academic English and it addressed the language problems that academics in risk areas face in their teaching and publishing, if English is not their first language. I would be very interested to continue my work on Academic English and my work for Cara, and would love to hear from anyone who'd like to collaborate on this or similar enterprises. I'd also love to meet other Cara mentors who are based at the University of St Andrews or in Scotland. My webinar was attended by some 60 academics (junior and senior), mainly from the Middle East and Eastern Europe. For more information on Cara, see www.cara.ngo; my mentee is a senior academic at the University of Thamar, Yemen.
Find out more about Dr Christine Rauer
Email: cr30@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Lecturer, School of International Relations
Research interests: Forced Migration; Borders; Activism; Digital Technology
Research projects: Refugee and Asylum Seeker Activism in Scotland, 1999-Present, funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. This project sought to catalogue the activism of refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland since the introduction of the asylum dispersal system in 1999, and understand the forms that such activism takes, and the issues around which such activism centres. My current research project examines the proliferation of digital border control technology, and focuses on the ethical challenges that they pose.
Teaching: IR3204 Migration in Global Politics: Ethics, Politics and Practice; IR3065 Refugees and International Relations; IR5046 Migration and Political Theory.
Find out more about Dr Natasha Saunders
Email: negs@St-andrews.ac.uk
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Associate Lecturer, School of International Relations
Research interests: Multi-displacement; resistance and activism; diasporic resistance, and transnational solidarity
Research projects: I recently completed an enterprenurial project that supported refugee youths with tailored mentorship to contribute to their health-related projects: https://cpcs.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/research/refugee-entrepreneurial-fund/. This year, I am working with Syrian/Palestinian multi-displaced/refugee communities in the Middle East, as part of a larger project that studies contribution to peacebuilding in their host communities.
Find out more about Dr Malaka Shwaikh
Email: mmbs1@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology
Research interest: Recently I have been involved with a team working on the Windrush scandal, hence forced migration of black UK citizens to the Caribbean. I have also worked on court cases from Caribbean citizens seeking refugee status in the UK.
Teaching: I teach on the Caribbean, on cosmopolitanism/cosmopolitics and topics around perception/communication.
Other initiatives: I have written and co-written multiple region-expert reports on migration for appellants taking cases to tribunals and courts in the UK.
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PhD student, School of International Relations
Research interests: China's foreign policy; Rohingya refugees' protection; Sino-Myanmar relations
Research projects: My PhD project focused on how China engaged with the global refugee protection regime, with one in-depth case study of its engagement in the voluntary repatriation of the Rohingya refugees. I adopt norm contestation theory to explain how China influenced refugee protection norms. I use extensive elite interviews with Rohingya refugees, Chinese academics and UN officials to collect and analyze primary data.
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The Centre for Minorities Research is an interdisciplinary platform that examines how axes of class, race/ethnicity, gender, generation, nationality, religion, and sexuality work together to inform the experiences of minorities. Cutting across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, the CMR pursues applied research on the political and social struggles of minority groups, the economic and labour market consequences of increasing diversity, and the governance and management of minorities. Understanding multicultural futures will be a central concern for governments, international organisations, academic institutions, and the general public in the coming years. The CMR provides a platform for sustainable research, networking and impact activities and a forum for outreach discussion that gets to the heart of complex questions concerning minority representation.