2025/2026 NRF Fellows

Dr Amani Kasherwa is a lecturer in social work at the School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work at the University of Queensland (UQ), specialising in child, youth, and family social work. He received his PhD in Social Work from the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) in 2024. Since completing his PhD, Dr Kasherwa has been involved in multiple research projects relevant to his engagement with refugee-background children and families, including those in humanitarian settings. He is committed to research that amplifies the voices of young people, ensuring that trauma-informed care and culturally responsive support services are informed by lived experience and meaningful community engagement.

As part of his NRF project, Dr Kasherwa aims to share his findings and recommendations to inform and influence policy, particularly in addressing the needs of refugee-background children and families. His work aims to highlight significant gaps in current service provision frameworks and policies, which often take a Western-centric approach to child maltreatment—failing to account for the unique complexities of refugee children’s pre- and post-resettlement experiences. His policy paper aims to focus on breaking down key barriers to help-seeking identified in his research, including the mistrust between parents and service practitioners, language barriers, and the widespread lack of cultural safety in most support services.

Andrew Wai Phyo Kyaw is a PhD candidate in International Development Studies at Chulalongkorn University. His PhD thesis, “Refugee Empowerment Paradox in a Non-Signatory State: Legal Empowerment of Urban Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Thailand,” investigates the legal literacy and agency of urban refugees and asylum seekers searching for legal protection in Thailand. Andrew is also a Research Associate under the project: ‘Advancing Knowledge on Forced Displacement in Southeast Asia’ at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD), Chiang Mai University, where he facilitates capacity-building workshops and participatory action research on forced displacement issues in Southeast Asia. He is also a co-researcher for the three-year project (2023-2025): ‘Advancing Refugee Protection and Promoting Accountability in Southeast Asia through Legal Empowerment and Refugee Leadership,’ which studies the legal empowerment of urban refugees in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

As part of his NRF project, Andrew plans to conduct a series of workshops to disseminate findings from his dissertation, which focuses on how urban refugee communities acquire and apply legal knowledge in their daily lives. These workshops aim to create a shared platform for both practitioners and refugee communities to engage in dialogue about what has—and has not—been effectively addressed at the community level, particularly in relation to legal empowerment efforts by practitioners. Andrew believes that these workshops, along with the participatory approaches he intends to employ, will foster constructive evaluation and collaboration. They will help identify practical ways for refugee relief agencies to design legal empowerment initiatives that are community-driven—leveraging existing community networks while receiving technical support from these agencies.

Dr Samanwita Paul is currently engaged as a Teaching Fellow at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology co-conducting courses on Philosophy, Ethics and Governance of AI. Prior to this Dr Paul has completed her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her thesis explored the experiences of Rohingya women refugees in India beyond the prevalent narratives of vulnerability. She is engaged in various capacities with several refugee led and refugee focused organizations in India over the last five years and she has been responsible for drafting numerous press briefs, policy papers and reports related to the Rohingya community in India. Through her various academic and humanitarian interactions with the community for over half a decade, she witnessed the lives of Rohingya refugees in India not only from a political-policy perspectives, but at a personal and humane level.

As part of her NRF project, Dr Paul aims to make the everyday realities of Rohingya refugees in India more accessible to a broader and more diverse audience by writing public blogs and opinion pieces that translate her research findings into relatable narratives—particularly highlighting the gendered dimensions of personal experiences within refugee camps and detention centres. Through this work, she hopes not only to recognise the resilience and contributions of the Rohingya community to Indian society, but also to help reshape public discourse and reduce the stigma perpetuated by mainstream media. Her storytelling approach seeks to counter Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric, instead centring the lived realities of a refugee group navigating profound legal precarity in India. Over time, these narratives may contribute to building alliances among key stakeholders and help inform advocacy efforts and legislative debates, ultimately supporting the development of more humane and just policies for Rohingya refugees in India.