Inspiring Journey Uplifting Researchers Relationships

At what has now become an annual part of the IJURR Foundation awardee programme, we brought together two groups of awardees: welcoming the 2025 cohort and reflecting on the 2024 awardees progress.

Aireen Andal (2023) awardee, supported by Nihal Hafez (2024), continued her inspiration buddies programme which she first unveiled at last year’s meeting. Bringing together 2024’s awardees who are at the end of their journey with the Foundation and 2025’s fresh awardees. Aireen’s enthusiasm is infectious and she is committed to building a global network of early career scholars. 

From 2024’s round we had Umar al Faruq, Sara Amare Gebremeskel, Marcela Alonsa Ferreira, Nihal Hafez, Lamis Jamil, Mengzhi Ling, Diana Torres Obregon and Harshita Sinha. We congratulated all those who had finished their PhD’s with a well earned round of applauds. 

The following 2025 awardees joined us: Mehmet Eroglu, Jasson Fernández Díaz, Su Su Myat, Thiruppathi P, Vishnu Prasad, Petra Samaha, Said Zaaneen and Lu Wang. From IJURR we had Eduardo Marques (Editor) and from the Foundation Tuna Tasan Kok (Chair), Champaka Rajagopal (Trustee) and Sarah Daisy (Administrator). 

Aireen worked with Nihal Hafez from 2024’s batch of awardees to track down the first awardee listed on our website – Dr Sanjeev Routray. Sanjeev spoke about his journey from PhD student to well respected academic and author. When asked how he managed applying for jobs with research post degree, he said “I didn’t and maybe don’t do what I did”. He entertained us with his tale of dedication to finding a publisher for his book before he had secured a job. Thankfully he was successful! 

After introductions the large group split into breakout rooms where 2025’s cohort could ask the 2024 awardees questions – discussions were held on immigrant experiences, publishing in journals, mental health and forming whats app groups to meet up with others in the same location or at future conferences. We came back together to share our discussions and with some more words of encouragement from Aireen that was it for another year. 

After the meeting Marcela and Petra both based at Sciences Po set up an alumni group on Linkedin which is now at 90 members! We will be using this to share news and arrange future meet ups.