Overview

Creating pathways to leadership for displaced people in academia, research, and professional spaces worldwide.

The Refugee-Led Research Hub (RLRH) is a global organisation working to support people with lived experience of displacement to become thought-leaders and change-makers.

Founded in 2020, RLRH emerged from a simple recognition: displaced people are often excluded from decisions that shape their lives and lack pathways to leadership roles, whether in academic, research, or other professional spaces.

Our team supports refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, stateless individuals, and others affected by forced displacement to access and lead within spaces that influence how displacement is understood and addressed.

More than 30 RLRH colleagues work alongside a global affiliate community of over 1,400 displacement-affected individuals from more than 80 countries. The majority of our team has lived experience of displacement, grounding our programmes in community insight and purpose, while building strategic partnerships with local and global institutions.

Today, our work spans multiple regions and platforms, opening access for a wide range of participation. Our programmes are developed and run from our offices in Nairobi and at the University of Oxford, and in more recently developed hubs in Kuala Lumpur, which serves as a Southeast Asia regional base, Kakuma Refugee Camp (Kenya), Kampala (Uganda), and our city-based Oxfordshire Community Hub. We have an active affiliate community in Amman (Jordan), and a vibrant global digital network.

While RLRH’s name foregrounds research, our mission spans a broader set of complementary activities. We cultivate leadership across three interconnected areas: academic pathways, professional influence, and refugee-led research. Each intervention is designed to support affiliates’ progression from access to influence, contributing to systems-level change and positive social impact.

Why this matters

More than 100 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced, yet displacement-affected people remain significantly under-represented in postgraduate education, research, and humanitarian leadership. When those most affected by displacement are excluded from producing knowledge and shaping policy, solutions risk being incomplete or disconnected from lived realities.

Our programmes

RLRH supports individuals at every stage of their academic, research, and professional journeys through three interconnected pillars.

Academic:

Our programmes encourage displacement-affected learners to access advanced academic opportunities, particularly master’s degrees and PhD programmes. Through tailored courses, mentorship, institutional partnerships, and scholarship navigation, we create structured pathways from undergraduate study to postgraduate leadership. Our flagship initiatives — including Graduate Horizons and Refugee Studies Foundations — connect learners to global academic networks and prepare them to thrive in rigorous academic environments.

Research:

RLRH creates opportunities for researchers with displacement backgrounds to lead social science and humanities research projects from start to finish. The research agenda is guided by the concerns of forcibly displaced communities and aims to have a direct impact on policy and practice.

Professional Pathways:

We connect individuals with professional development opportunities, supporting the transition into meaningful careers in a wide range of professional sectors. Our Graduate Traineeship and related professional development programmes prepare recent graduates for paid, short-to-medium-term placements with reputable, values-aligned organisations. These opportunities serve as springboards into long-term employment and influence.

Our approach

RLRH’s approach is grounded in a commitment to overcome the structural barriers that prevent displacement-affected individuals playing a leadership role in the decisions that affect their lives.. e We recognise that limited access to opportunity,not a lack of of talent, frequently restricts individuals’ pathways to leadership .

In the RLRH community, displaced individuals are positioned to develop the knowledge and skills needed to shape agendas for policy and practice. . By collaborating with universities, foundations, NGOs, businesses, and multilateral agencies, we aim to build sustainable pathways to influence transformative, systems-level change.

Our locations

RLRH has a global virtual footprint and operates physically from multiple locations, enabling us to achieve our organisational goals and meet affiliates in their unique contexts. We operate in Nairobi, Kenya; Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Southeast Asia regional hub); University of Oxford, UK ; Oxfordshire, UK (county-wide community hub); Amman, Jordan (affiliate community base). In mid-2026, we will open an office in Kampala, Uganda.

Our partners

RLRH is built on partnership. We actively collaborate with universities, NGOs, research institutes, multilateral agencies, and philanthropic organisations committed to strengthening displacement-affected leadership in meaningful, accountable ways. Our growth since 2020 has been made possible by generous funding from visionary supporters, including the Open Society Foundations, the IKEA Foundation, the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation, Porticus, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

We always welcome collaboration. Whether you are looking to expand postgraduate access, commission or fund refugee-led research, develop professional pathways, or invest in long-term systemic change, we invite conversation.

Please get in touch at [email protected].