Skip to main content

Refugee Hosts Newsletter No. 2, Summer 2017

Countries
World
+ 5 more
Sources
UCL
Publication date

Approaching Faith and Displacement

Refugee Hosts is an AHRC-ESRC funded research project investigating local community experiences of and responses to displacement in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. In particular, one of the key questions Refugee Hosts is exploring relates to the explicit and implicit ways in which faith and spirituality inform responses to refugees from Syria. Ahead of September 2017, when our fieldwork will begin in earnest, we have prioritised thinking about faith and spirituality in contexts of displacement: especially where challenges and opportunities exist for humanitarian policy, practice and research. Our conversations have so far centred around a blog series on faith and displacement, including pieces featured in this newsletter.
The aim of this series has been to capture faith as lived experience – as sets of ideas, practices and structures that shape a common (and contested) experience of the world – and also to challenge ‘secular’ assumptions that often frame humanitarian thinking.
The series draws on the research of diverse contributions, from members of our project partners, including the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities, to artists and creatives who evoke faith as a way of responding to conflict and displacement. This rich conversation also demonstrates the value of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to questions of faith and displacement, something Refugee Hosts will continue to implement through creative writing and translation workshops in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.