Professor Joanna McIntyre will deliver a lecture at the Université du Luxembourg on 23 October 2025, as part of a series focussing on international perspectives on teacher education for social justice and inclusion.
Abstract
In her lecture, Joanna will delve into the nuanced and sometimes paradoxical landscape of education inclusion for refugee students. Drawing on ten years of research, she will unpack the enduring obstacles that refugee and asylum-seeking learners encounter – challenges embedded in policy frameworks, institutional practices and societal narratives. She will then outline an inclusive model developed in her earlier scholarship, anchored in the interconnected principles of safety, belonging and succeeding. Building on this groundwork, she will share findings from her latest research on spatial and relational belonging, which highlights the intricate and sometimes ambiguous nature of belonging for refugee students. This work questions the assumption that belonging is always a positive or straightforward experience, and advocates for a revised discourse – one which acknowledges the reciprocal dynamics of belonging and the responsibilities of both newcomers and established members of educational communities. Throughout the session, Joanna will engage with the complexities of championing refugee inclusion through teacher education while simultaneously interrogating prevailing definitions of inclusion, the unintended consequences of targeted inclusion strategies, and the difficulties of fostering belonging in contexts where it is politically contested.
This event will be moderated by the Université du Luxembourg's Dr Lucy Hunt, a previous research fellow at the University of Nottingham who continues to be an affiliated research fellow for the Hub for Education for Refugees in Euopre (HERE).
Posted on Monday 20th October 2025