Speaking and Public Engagement
Public Conversations on Displacement, Refuge and Humanitarian Futures
Elena is a globally acclaimed speaker on displacement, refuge, and humanitarian affairs, addressing some of the defining questions surrounding displacement today: who responds when people are displaced; how refugees and communities create forms of care, protection and solidarity; how humanitarian systems can become more accountable and equitable; and how stories, images and knowledge shape understandings of migration, crisis and belonging.
She speaks across universities, international organisations, humanitarian and policy fora, conferences, cultural institutions and public events, bringing research into conversation with policy, practice, literature and the arts.
For speaking, media and other enquiries, please get in touch →
Speaking
Keynotes, distinguished lectures and public conversations
Elena has delivered invited keynote, plenary and distinguished lectures internationally across migration and forced displacement, humanitarianism, religion, South-South relations, care and ethics, representation and the politics of knowledge.
Selected Talks and Conversations:
“Navigating Fractures: The Role of Place and Resistance in Shifting Migration Regimes”, Queen Mary University of London, 2026.
“Locating the Trace: Home and the Poetry of Displacement” (jointly delivered with Yousif M. Qasmiyeh), StAnza and Poetry Association of Scotland John Masefield Lecture, 2026.
“Islamic Philanthropy and Humanitarian Responses to Displacement”, keynote, University of Birmingham, 2025.
“Displaced Arts: Creative Practices and Geographies of Asylum”, keynote, University of Edinburgh, 2025.
Humanitarian Xchange H24, inaugural global event, invited plenary speaker, 2024.
Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies Annual Conference, keynote, Oslo, 2022.
International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, keynote and plenary lectures, including Santos, Brazil, in 2022 and Accra, Ghana, in 2021.
“Messaging Migration and Mobility”, IMISCOE Spring Conference, University of Oxford, plenary, 2021.
Topics for talks and conversations
Migration, displacement and refuge: Changing migration regimes; refugee-host relations and overlapping displacement; mobility and immobility; sanctuary and belonging; and new approaches to understanding refugee response and refuge.
Humanitarianism and humanitarian futures: Humanitarian response in contexts of conflict and displacement; localisation and local leadership; protection and humanitarian access; accountability; South-South humanitarianism; humanitarian diplomacy; and the changing international humanitarian landscape.
Storytelling, narrative and representation: How refugees, migrants and humanitarian crises are represented; narratives of home and displacement; voice, visibility and silence; poetry and photography; narrative and epistemic justice; and how stories shape public understandings of crisis and belonging.
Religion, migration and social justice: Religion and forced migration; faith-based humanitarianism; Islamic philanthropy; religious actors and communities; and the intersections of religion, gender, humanitarian response and social justice.
Gender, generation and care: Gendered and intergenerational experiences of displacement; childhood and youth; family and community relationships; care, responsibility and inequality; and intersectional approaches to migration and refuge.
Universities, sanctuary and displacement: How universities can respond to displacement and conflict through sanctuary, educational access, inclusive and trauma-informed education, international partnership and institutional responsibility.
Research, ethics and knowledge production: Ethics in displacement and conflict-affected research; refugee-centred and Southern approaches to knowledge production; participatory and creative methodologies; and questions of who is recognised as a producer of knowledge.
Media & Public Engagement
Bringing research into wider public conversations
Elena regularly contributes to the media, including through interviews on BBC News Live, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 Today and Channel 4 News and, in print, in The Guardian, The Irish Times and The Washington Post. In addition to media appearances, her public engagement brings research on displacement into conversation with humanitarian and policy debates, museums and exhibitions, literature, photography and other forms of creative practice. Across this work, she is particularly interested in how complex questions about displacement can enter public discussion without reducing refugees and migrants to categories of vulnerability, crisis or victimhood.
Her public-facing collaborations examine not only which stories are told about displacement, but who tells them, whose knowledge becomes visible and how established narratives can be questioned or transformed.
Selected public and creative collaborations
Refugees: Forced to Flee
Elena’s work and expertise helped inform the Imperial War Museum's Refugees: Forced to Flee exhibition, bringing scholarship on displacement and refugee experiences into dialogue with museum practice and public engagement.
The Southern Eye
The Southern Eye: Co-Seeing Displacements, developed with the poet and scholar Yousif M. Qasmiyeh and photographer and film-maker Saiful H. Omi and published by Broken Sleep Books in 2024, brings creative and intellectual practice into conversation around displacement and ways of seeing.
Explore The Southern Eye →
The Camp as Archive
Through the The Camp as Archive project and related work within Imagining Futures through [Un]Archived Pasts, Elena has jointly-led creative-writing and photography work connected with questions of displacement, narratives and archives.
Policy and International Conversations
Elena is regularly sought after to bring her research into international policy and humanitarian conversations. Her work has included engagement with UNHCR and government and higher-education stakeholders, including contributing to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ Dialogue on Protection Challenges in Geneva and offering invited briefings to Members of Parliament and Ministries across the UK and Europe. This work creates dialogue between research and practice while bringing refugee-centred, Southern and other frequently marginalised perspectives into wider conversations about displacement and humanitarian response.
Speaking and Media Enquiries
Elena welcomes invitations to contribute to keynotes, distinguished and public lectures, policy forums, roundtables, festivals, cultural events, podcasts and media conversations relating to displacement, refuge, humanitarianism, migration, storytelling and the politics of knowledge.
For invitations and enquiries, please get in touch →