2022/2023 NRF Fellows

Abdullah Mohammadi is a second-generation Afghan refugee born in exile. He holds a Master degree in Demography from the University of Tehran and in his thesis, ‘The myth of return: Socio-economic reintegration and sustainable return among Afghans’, he studied the experience of socio-economic reintegration among Afghan returnees from Iran and their future migration intentions. He also published several papers, chapters and op-eds on Afghan displacement and migrant smuggling networks.

Since 2016, Abdullah has been working with Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) at the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) as the Regional Coordinator for Asia region and supported the establishment of the 4Mi in the region to collect data on Afghan, Rohingya and Bangladeshi mixed movements. At MMC Asia, Abdullah and his colleagues develop information products in order to inform policy formation, political debate, and humanitarian programming. He has extensive field experience in Afghanistan, Iran, India, Indonesia, Sweden and Germany. Prior to MMC, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Tehran where he was working on research projects on Afghan refugees’ secondary movements from Iran towards Europe and Australia. He was also a teacher at a self-administered refugee-led school for undocumented Afghan children in Qom, Iran.

Following the events leading up to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021, he was displaced like thousands of other Afghans and now, is living in Sweden as a refugee. 

Abdullah can be contacted at abdullah.mohammadi@mixedmigration.org

Jonathan is a PhD Graduate from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. His thesis explored the learner identities of students with refugee backgrounds in Malaysia as they approached the end of their secondary education and looked towards continuing their educational journeys in a context of profound uncertainty. The PhD project adopted a participatory methodology that engaged youth in refugee learning centres in Kuala Lumpur in an exploration of their learning biographies and identities to further understand the sociological drivers behind access to education.

Prior to embarking on the PhD, Jonathan spent time working as the Education Programmes Coordinator at a refugee learning centre in Malaysia. During this time, he helped to launch an IGCSE programme and was part of a team that founded the CERTE (Connecting and Equipping Refugees to Tertiary Education) Bridge Course. This intensive bridging programme connecting aspiring youth to opportunities to continue into higher education through knowledge transfer and skills development and support applications to programmes available to youth with refugee backgrounds. The CERTE Bridge Course has now completed eight cohorts of students, including two cohorts conducted online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to work with refugee learning centres, Jonathan has conducting research into improving participation of youth with refugee backgrounds in higher education with universities in Malaysia that have signed MOUs with UNHCR Malaysia. As part of the Fellowship, he aims to develop a set of guidance for universities and institutions of further education in Malaysia that hope to open their doors to students with refugee backgrounds. This will include familiarising admissions staff with the difficulties that these students face in access to higher education and how access programmes can be designed to better accommodate their specific needs.

Jonathan can be contacted at jonathan.birtwell@cantab.net

Fiona MacGregor is an award-winning researcher and analyst specialising in gender, conflict and human rights. She has worked extensively on issues involving women and girls affected by armed conflict and forced displacement in Asia Pacific for over a decade. In 2022 she was awarded a Doctoral Scholarship on UN Goal 16 of Peace and Trust to become a PHD candidate at Durham Law School. Her research involves a feminist social-legal exploration of international law and policy relating to sexual and gender-based violence in large-scale displacement settings.

During the Covid 19 pandemic she undertook a Master in Laws: Gender, Conflict and Human Rights at the Transitional Justice Institute of Ulster University for which she was awarded distinction. Her dissertation drew on her extensive field experience in Myanmar and Bangladesh – as a journalist and with the UN – to identify and explore the under-researched issue of sexual violence being perpetrated against Rohingya women and girl refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Her work used feminist socio-legal methodologies to consider how UN and State policies contribute to these violations going largely unaddressed.

Fiona’s research on human rights abuses against Rohingya people has seen her report from displacement camps in Myanmar’s Rakhine State; from Malaysia and Thailand during the Andaman Sea during boat-push backs; and from Bangladesh in 2017 as Myanmar military attacks forced hundreds of thousands of civilians over the border.

She went on to work with UN agencies in Cox’s Bazar in various roles and gained extensive experience and insight into the humanitarian response there. Her most recent work for the UN involved in-depth field and desk-based research on security threats against women and girl refugee in the camps which gave rise to significant policy recommendations being shared across the UN response.

Fiona can be contacted at fimacgregor@googlemail.com

Rabia Salihi is a Senior Researcher with the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation (AHRDO) where she researches and investigates human rights violations and international crimes under the Taliban regime. Prior to this, Rabia worked as a Programme Specialist with the Asia (formerly Afghanistan) Displacement Solutions Platform (ADSP) at the Danish Refugee Council, Research Specialist at the Afghan Children Read, and the Afghanistan Holding Group.

Following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, Rabia was displaced and is now resettled in Canada through the Canadian dedicated refugee stream for human rights defenders at risk. While in transit in Pakistan prior to her resettlement, Rabia supported more than 170 other human rights defenders and their families with their asylum applications and relocation processes. During this time, Rabia continued her work with AHRDO and has authored and contributed to four thematic policy research reports recently released by the organization.

Rabia holds a master’s degree in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and an MA in in Development Studies: track in Governance, Migration and Diversity from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Rabia’s MA thesis on implementation of assisted and voluntary return and reintegration schemes in Afghanistan was the winner of Jos Mooij Research Paper Award in 2020.

Experiencing displacement firsthand, and for the second time in her life, Rabia continues to advocate for refugees and persons involuntarily returned to Afghanistan, including former Afghanistan National Defence and Security Forces, women, and children among others. Rabia’s work and a policy paper on ‘assisted’ and ‘voluntary’ returns comes at a time of increased need to ensure more robust and transparent measures to support displaced Afghans.

Rabia can be contacted at rabia.salihi@gmail.com