Breaking Barriers Refugee Week

Breaking Barriers Refugee Week is the flagship annual series of events of Leicester as a University of Sanctuary, which we have been running since 2018, and have held largely online since 2021. From 2026 onwards, we will be running BBRW events at key points throughout the year rather than intensively during a one week period.

As implied by the name, the series focuses on breaking barriers. This partly refers to shining a spotlight on the range of barriers faced by refugee-background students and those who support them to access educational opportunities, and creative ways in which these can be challenged successfully. It also partly refers to breaking new ground in terms of moving the discussion, research and practice forward in the UK HE sector about what it means to be a University of Sanctuary in the current social and political context, and how we might collectively continue to critically examine and improve our practice.

Upcoming Breaking Barriers Refugee Week Series 2026 event

Our first BBRW Series event of 2026 will be held in collaboration with the University of Leicester’s first ever Empathy Fortnight:

Responding to Gaza: Sanctuary, Silence and Selective Empathy  

1.00pm-2.30pm (UK time) on 9 March 2026 

Register for Responding to Gaza: Sanctuary, Silence and Selective Empathy

Gaza has been referred to in many quarters as 'the moral litmus test of our time'. Despite the scale of the killing and destruction in the Strip since October 2023, and the detailed documentation and sharing of information about widespread violations of international humanitarian law unfolding in real time, this appears to be a test that the world has badly failed. As part of the University of Leicester's Empathy Fortnight and Breaking Barriers Refugee Week Series, we will examine how and why this can have happened, in our webinar entitled: Responding to Gaza: Sanctuary, Silence and Selective Empathy.  

In this webinar, we will hear from two academics who have been exploring international responses to this unfolding catastrophe (نكبة) over the past two years from different disciplinary perspectives – Prof. Roberto De Vogli and Dr Khawla Badwan. 

From the fields of psychology and critical social sciences, Prof. De Vogli will draw on research from his recently-published book, Selective Empathy: The West through the Gaze of Gaza, which uncovers the workings of the moral and emotional double standard, based on a widespread dehumanisation of Palestinians, which has made it possible for the genocide in Gaza to continue unabated for so long.   

This will be followed by a talk from Dr Khawla Badwan, who will draw upon insights from her upcoming book in the field of Applied Linguistics, Still Gaza: Language in Times of Unspeakability. Khawla will explore the role of language as a form of bearing witness, collective responsibility, critical education, and ethical action, especially when it is abused as a tool for silencing, oppression, intimidation, and manipulation to cover up for the crime of all crimes in Gaza. 

There will be time for questions and discussion towards the end of the session. 

Roberto De Vogli is Associate Professor of Global Health and Psychology of Power at the University of Padova. He is also the former vice-director of the University's Human Rights Center. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, The Lancet, and The British Medical Journal, as well as three books. In 2026, he published “Selective Empathy: The West Through the Gaze of Gaza”, in both English and Italian (Brill's Critical Social Studies and Haymarket Books). The book addresses the international community's emotional and moral double standard in responding to the genocide in Gaza, calling for empathy “beyond borders.” 

 Khawla Badwan is Reader in Applied Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, with expertise in language for social justice struggles, intercultural communication, language education, and literacy debates. Some of her publications include Language in a Globalised World: Social Justice Perspectives on Mobility and Contact (Palgrave, 2021), Keep Telling of Gaza, with Alison Phipps (Sidhe Press, 2024). She is co-editor of Global Migration and Diversity of Educational Experiences in the Global South and North(Routledge, 2023), Critical Perspectives on Teaching in the Multilingual University (Routledge, 2024), and Language, Place, and the Body in Childhood Literacies (Routledge,2025). Her current work includes Still Gaza: Language in Times of Unspeakability (under contract with Cambridge University Press). 

You can access recordings of previous years' events below