Integration Through Contribution Seminar 2: From Displacement to Discovery - How Refugees Scientists Shape the World

Seminar 2: From Displacement to Discovery: How Refugees Scientists Shape the World

October 14th 2026, 10.00-12.00
Register here.

The aim of this seminar is to critically examine the role of migration in shaping scientific excellence by highlighting the contributions of migrant and refugee scientists to global research and discovery. Drawing on empirical evidence, personal narratives, and institutional perspectives, the seminar will explore how migration influences scientific careers, winning research to the protection of scholars at risk and the mobilization of scientific diasporas.

Truth-seeking for the global good
Sarah Willcox (Scholars at Risk, EU)

Abstract. In an ideal (free and prosperous) society, knowledge is borderless and truth-seeking benefits the greatest good. In reality, as a power culture of disinformation spreads globally, ideas become crimes, borders tighten, and the public suffers the consequences. For over 25 years, the Scholars at Risk Network has monitored and responded to attacks on academic freedom and individual scholars around the world who, in the ordinary exercise of their work, are silenced and vilified. Many pay with their careers, some with their lives. In response, communities around them retreat into isolation and fear. Defending academic freedom and individual scholars at risk has never been more critical and never more incumbent on all parts of society -- far beyond university campuses or national boundaries -- to demand the borderless benefits of the freedom to think, question, and share ideas. This panel will explore the challenges and consequences that scholars around the world have faced, and more importantly, what they have overcome to advance their scholarship for the greater global good.

Sarah Willcox is Deputy Director of Scholars at Risk with responsibility for SAR’s internal operations, administration, and programming, including SAR’s protection, advocacy, and membership teams. Before SAR, Sarah directed the Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) and helped establish various efforts to support threatened academics, including the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), the PAUSE programme (France), and the University Alliance for Refugees and at-Risk Migrants (UARRM).

The impact of the experience of exile and displacement on scientific thought in history and currently.
Magdalena Kmak (Åbo Akademi University)

Abstract. Scholars and intellectuals have often been considered as those who, more often than other refugees, reflect on their exile or displacement, as a condition of general political or cultural significance. Historically, while some refused to be called exiled intellectuals, or remained silent about their experience, others recognized the impact of exile or migration experience on their academic work and their thoughts. Many understood that they would not have accomplished as much as they did if they had remained in their home countries. As Aslı Vatansever describes, displacement not only alters one’s existential conditions or way of viewing the world and the self but also challenges the primacy of the established forms of political, social, or scientific membership. It can provide alternative knowledge of societies that is rooted in mobility. In this talk, I will discuss the impact of the experience of displacement on scholarly exchanges in history and currently, through what has been called the first, second, and third generations of exile studies. I will in particular focus on the role of experience, emotions, and different forms of mobility and their impact on the production of new knowledge and scientific theories. As an example, I will focus on the impact of the exile experience on the conceptualization of the figure of the refugee by looking at the work of scholars exiled from Nazi Germany in the 1930s: Hannah Arendt, Louise Holborn, and Otto Kirchheimer.

Magdalena Kmak is a professor of Public International Law, with a specialisation in Migration and Minority Research, at Åbo Akademi University. Magdalena received her PhD in 2009 from the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. She holds the title of Docent in law and globalisation (University of Helsinki). Her research interests encompass mobility, migration and exile studies, public international law, human rights and international and European refugee and migration law. Magdalena is a PI and Consortium Director in the project ‘Diversity, Trust and Two-Way Integration (Mobile Futures)’ funded by the Strategic Research Council established within the Research Council of Finland (2021–2027). She is also co-founder of the Nordic Network on Climate-Related Displacement and Mobility.

Science Diplomacy in Action: How Ukrainian Scientists at Risk Build Networks, Partnerships and Impact
Yevheniia Polishchuk (Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman and Cracow University of Economics)

Abstract. This presentation explores how scientists at risk can become active actors of science diplomacy, contributing to international cooperation, knowledge exchange, and research system development despite displacement and disruption. Drawing on the experience of the Ukrainian Science Diaspora, it demonstrates how professional networks can evolve into platforms for mentoring, collaborative research, policy dialogue, and institutional capacity building. The presentation highlights practical mechanisms through which displaced researchers connect scientific communities across borders and mobilize expertise for societal