Our history
Forging a vision
The Refugee-Led Research Hub (RLRH) was founded in 2020 as an initiative of the University of Oxford, emerging from nearly a decade of participatory research within the Refugee Economies Programme. The Hub was conceived by Professor Alexander Betts following a series of consultations with research assistants in Kakuma Refugee Camp in 2018 and 2019. These dialogues highlighted a critical need to shift from traditional models of knowledge production in humanitarian settings toward a radically inclusive approach to community-engaged research.
What began as an original concept note and pitch to the IKEA Foundation in late 2019 has since evolved through a deliberate process of co-creation. RLRH was designed from the outset to bridge the gap between world-class academic institutions and the expertise of scholars with lived experience of displacement – and it continues to evolve to achieve that purpose.
With this vision set out and having secured an enabling grant from the IKEA Foundation, in early 2020 our team began to form in Nairobi, deep in the midst of profound global disruption. As the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped humanitarian access and exposed vulnerabilities in international response systems, long-standing questions about localisation, equity, and leadership gained a renewed urgency. Within UN agencies, philanthropic foundations, and civil society networks, critical conversations were taking place, interrogating who is positioned to lead in times of crisis, where decision-making authority should sit, and who has the responsibility to produce knowledge. Across a series of Zoom webinars, working groups, and bilaterals, a group who would become RLRH’s co-founders – Foni Joyce Vuni, Mohamed Hassan Mohamud, Bahati Ernestine, Alexander Betts, and Andonis Marden – came together with a shared conviction to ensure displacement-affected individuals are positioned to lead.
From the outset, RLRH was conceived as refugee-led in orientation and ambition, designed to centre displacement-affected leadership while working collaboratively across backgrounds and institutions to expand access and influence. Early conversations with partners and thought leaders, including GRN, APNOR, LERRN, Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, and the Open Society Foundations, among others, helped shape the direction of what would become a structured vision for addressing deep-rooted imbalances in academia, research, and humanitarian practice.
Establishing physical presence from Nairobi
RLRH established its first office base in Nairobi with support from our institutional host in Kenya, the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), whose compound in Kileleshwa served as a physical space to begin forming a localised community. This partnership provided the operational foundation for the early team to explore ideas together, build a vision, and begin developing innovative programming.
The earliest work centred on research. One of the first major initiatives was a multi-stakeholder project that examined refugee-led organisations across four countries in East Africa, an effort that both documented and elevated forms of leadership long present but often under-recognised within global discourse. The full scope of the research process – from conceptualisation, to tool development and data collection, to authorship and presentation of findings – revealed a wide range of instructive lessons that would form the backbone of RLRH’s practices moving forward. As the first refugee-led research project in East Africa, this flagship study allowed us to test and refine our research facilitation and skills transfer model for supporting displaced researchers. It also proved to the sector that refugees can lead research on topics that affect them. It also became clear to the growing team that research leadership alone wasn’t enough to overcome structural barriers that were preventing refugees from experiencing professional success.
Introducing academic programmes
Through its early programming, RLRH encountered a consistent frustration. A significant number of individuals we worked with held undergraduate degrees and were seeking opportunities to pursue postgraduate study, yet pathways into Master’s and PhD programmes remained difficult to access. The talent and ambition was evident, but the opportunity gap was stark.
In response, RLRH collaborated with colleagues in the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford and the Global Education Movement (GEM) to design a structured academic intervention. The result was a 10-module course in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, a multidisciplinary set of lectures and interactive exercises and assessments introducing future learners to anthropology, international humanitarian law, economics, international relations, political theory, and related fields. The course intended to build academic confidence and connect participants to global intellectual networks.
This course was built into the 12-month RSC-BIEA Fellowship, RLRH’s first major academic and research offering that was available to 12 African students with displacement backgrounds, spanning Libya, Eritrea, Zambia, Kenya, Burundi, and beyond, to participate in a full-time, paid course that would launch most into funded Master’s degrees and professional spaces worldwide. Applications for the Fellowship exceeded expectations. While the team had planned for a modest cohort, it was evident that there was extraordinary global demand, and in the years that followed, RLRH would continue to receive thousands of applications for academic programmes from qualified Bachelor’s-holding candidates with displacement backgrounds. From the Fellowship, RLRH went on to create a more accessible three-month online programme, ‘Refugee Studies Pathways,’ that offered similar content and enabled RLRH’s new academic access team to deliver material live to 150+ learners at a time, per cohort. The content later evolved to become ‘RLRH Foundations: Refugee and Forced Migration Studies,’ which made the programme available in an asynchronous format that learners could engage with in their own time and at their preferred pace.
Creating pathways to leadership
As RLRH’s academic offerings grew, so did the team’s understanding of the input required to further strengthen and assure refugee leadership. Access to postgraduate education was one pathway. Research authorship was another. But leadership in displacement contexts also required professional footholds within influential institutions, particularly among NGOs, multilateral agencies, research bodies, and policy organisations.
From this recognition emerged a third programmatic pillar focused on professional placements and livelihoods. RLRH began developing paid, short-to-medium-term placements with values-aligned organisations, designed as structured stepping stones into longer-term employment and influence.
Over time, RLRH’s three primary intervention areas – academic pathways, refugee-led research, and professional training and placements – became mutually reinforcing. Academic advancement strengthened research leadership. Research visibility strengthened professional credibility. And professional placements expanded and elevated our ability to influence.
Growing into a global movement
With generous early support from the Open Society Foundations, the IKEA Foundation, the Robert Bosch Foundation, and continued visionary engagement from the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, RLRH has steadily expanded.
From a founding office in Nairobi, RLRH now operates with presence at the University of Oxford, in the wider Oxfordshire community, in Kuala Lumpur, and Kakuma Refugee Camp, with a growing presence in Uganda and an active affiliate community in Amman, Jordan. These physical hubs are supported by a global digital network that keeps RLRH connected to affiliates and partners across regions.
Today, RLRH has supported more than 1,400 affiliates across over 80 countries. The team includes more than 30 colleagues, a majority of whom bring lived experience of displacement. What began as a small founding group coordinating across Nairobi and Oxford has grown into a globally connected organisation advancing displacement-affected leadership across sectors.
Looking ahead
By 2030, RLRH aims to support 1,000+ displacement-affected individuals into Master’s programmes, publish an additional 50 research outputs authored by individuals with lived experience of displacement, and facilitate more than 200 professional placements.
These targets reflect our commitment to long-term structural change, reshaping who produces knowledge, who occupies leadership roles, and who influences the future of displacement policy and practice. We invite you to join us on this journey.
