University Refugee Week 2026: A Celebration of Courage

Refugee Week

Every year in June, the UK pauses to shine a light on the importance of Refugees. Refugee Week brings people from diverse backgrounds together, celebrating the strength, creativity, resilience, and contributions of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. Refugee Week 2026 will run from 15–21 June, with the official theme of Courage.

Courage is central to the refugee experience. It shapes every journey, every decision to leave home, and every step toward a future in a new place. This year, Refugee Week invites us to reflect on what courage truly means. It asks us to recognise courage in many forms. Courage can be loud or quiet, visible or unseen. It can be the choice to speak up or the choice to simply keep going. Regardless, courage drives every story worth telling. Refugee Week connects us to millions of people across the globe who have fled war, persecution, climate disaster, and other forms of violence. It takes place around World Refugee Day (20 June), a United Nations-backed day of recognition. Together, these moments highlight not only struggle, but also hope and human potential.

What the Week Looks Like Across the UK

Across the UK, Refugee Week 2026 will feature events, talks, exhibitions, film screenings, workshops, performances, and community gatherings. Communities large and small use this week to share stories, show solidarity, and celebrate culture. Many events are free and open to everyone. Some highlight artistic expression. Others focus on community building, education, or advocacy. In every case, the aim is the same: to bring people together, to listen, and to learn.

Step by step, these activities remind us that refugees do more than survive. They enrich their communities, teach us about courage in everyday life, and remind us that courage takes many shapes, from the bold to the ordinary. It can be as grand as public resistance and it can be as simple as welcoming a neighbour.

University Refugee Week

University Refugee Week connects higher education communities across the UK in a shared moment of recognition and reflection. It celebrates the strength, talent and determination of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. At the same time, it encourages universities to think carefully about the part they play in creating environments built on welcome, opportunity and genuine belonging.

Throughout the week, campuses host lectures, panel discussions, creative workshops and open forums. These events bring students, academic staff and external partners into conversation. They create space to explore the realities of forced displacement. They also centre lived experience, ensuring refugee voices lead and inform the discussion.

Importantly, the week does more than raise awareness. It challenges institutions to act. Universities can widen access through scholarships and tailored admissions pathways. They can provide mentoring, language support and community networks. They can also shape research, policy and public debate. Step by step, these actions help turn values into practical support.

University Refugee Week will take place from 2–8 March 2026. During these seven days, higher education institutions across the UK will come together with a shared purpose: to strengthen understanding, encourage solidarity and expand meaningful opportunities for those rebuilding their lives through education.

University of Sanctuary

A University of Sanctuary is part of a national movement that brings together university staff, lecturers, researchers and students who are committed to making Higher Education institutions places of safety, solidarity and empowerment for people seeking sanctuary.

Across the UK, universities have a long and often courageous tradition of supporting refugees and individuals navigating the asylum system. The University of Sanctuary initiative builds on this legacy. It supports institutions that want to strengthen their commitment within today’s complex political and social climate. In doing so, it helps universities turn values of inclusion and justice into practical action.

The network was developed through a partnership between City of Sanctuary, Article 26, Student Action for Refugees and other collaborators. Together, these organisations work to embed a culture of welcome within universities, extend that culture into local communities, and strengthen inclusive practice across the wider UK Higher Education sector.

A University of Sanctuary, therefore, represents more than a title. It signals a sustained commitment to access, support and belonging for people seeking sanctuary. Ensuring that higher education remains open, responsive and compassionate. Edinburgh Napier University is proud to be part of this.

The Library

The library stands as one of the most inclusive and welcoming spaces within any university community. It opens its doors to everyone, regardless of background, identity or circumstance. It offers free access to knowledge, technology and a quiet study space. These foundations matter. They remove barriers and create opportunity. They give people the freedom to learn on equal ground.

At Edinburgh Napier University Library, the team works actively to nurture this kind of environment. Inclusive design shapes the physical space. Accessible resources support different learning needs. Clear guidance reduces uncertainty. Ongoing conversations with students help services evolve and improve. This approach ensures that all members of the community, including those seeking sanctuary, can study with confidence and dignity.

As a result, the library becomes more than a study area. It becomes a shared space of respect, curiosity and connection. A place where everyone has the right to learn, reflect and feel welcome.

The Library Reading Wall

Dr Arunima Bhattacharya has championed an initiative to prepare a Reading Wall in Merchiston Library, to connect with similar actions taken up by Universities of Sanctuary and Decolonising the Discipline network. She has a list of resources recommended by Edinburgh Napier University lecturers, which you can find below. They provide different perspectives from refugees and will help you reflect on how we can help people forced to leave their home behind.

Recomendations

Professor Scott Lyall

Edwin Muir’s poem ‘The refugees born for a land unknown’ .“

“Much of Edwin Muir’s poem speaks directly in the voice of the nameless refugee to the experience of displacement, terror and alienation.”

Dr Frederik Byrn Køhlert

‘Crossing Lines: Comics about Human Migration’ by A. Ellermann, F. Byrn Køhlert, S. Leavitt and M. Paquet

“Crossing Lines is a graphic anthology about human migration that challenges the rise of anti-immigrant populism. Blending visual and textual storytelling, this collection moves beyond traditional forms of communication to engage readers emotionally with the complex realities of migration.”

Dr Andrew Frayn

Ghassan Kanafani’s ‘The Land of Sad Oranges’ in ‘Men in the sun & other Palestinian stories’

“Ghassan Kanafani’s short story ‘The Land of Sad Oranges’ is about the dispossession of a Palestinian family in the aftermath of the 1948 Palestine War. The story’s child protagonist can’t really understand what’s happening, as the despair of their parents intensifies. The title motif evokes the displacement from the family’s own orange trees, standing for life, liveliness, cultural and physical sustenance.”

Dr Arunima Bhattacharya

Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘In the Presence of Absence’

“Tahrir Hamdi writes in “Darwish’s Geography” (2017): “For a poet who saw coffee as geography, it is difficult to imagine how one can separate Darwish, the individual, from the very idea of Palestine, which he sought to keep alive in almost every line he wrote” (Hamdi, 238).”

Stan Smith’s ‘Poetry and Displacement’

“Stan Smith writes in Poetry and Displacement (2007) that the displaced is the paradigmatic figure of twentieth-century history and poetry: Displacement is ‘not simply an external, geopolitical phenomenon. It is also an internal process, in which the subject is cast out from its own history and culture, sometimes from the very language in which it has been constituted’ (2007, 10).”

‘His House’, a film directed by Remi Weekes, is available on Box of Broadcast.

This British horror-thriller follows a refugee couple from South Sudan facing supernatural terror and hostile, unwelcoming conditions in a small English town.

Check out the Reading Wall at Merchiston Library for more recommendations.

Decolonising our Collections

Here at the Library, all our Librarians are working hard to decolonise and improve the diversity of our Library collections. We realise the importance and significance of the work we need to do here at the Library in making the Library inclusive to all.

You can see some newly added books on our BIPOC virtual bookshelf.

Resources

Why not browse what’s available on Librarysearch, our Library Catalogue? We have many great books and articles to help you broaden your knowledge. From Social Justice to Refugee Journeys.

By Juliet Kinsey

Read more on the blog with our article on Black History Month