On one of the hottest days of the year for the UK and Europe we brought together representatives from the IJURR Trustee Board, IJURR Editorial Collective and 2024 and 2025 Writing up Awardees to welcome our new 2026 awardees on board. 

Barbara Lipietz, our new Chair of Trustees and Nihal Hafez (2024 Awardee), IJURR Buddies Programme Co-ordinator braved the soaring temperatures of London to host another inspiring meeting. 

From IJURR we had Eduardo Marques (Editor) and from the Foundation: Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos (Trustee), Barbara Lipietz (Chair), Champaka Rajagopal (Trustee), Gareth Millington (Trustee) and and Sarah Daisy (Administrator). The following 2025 awardees joined us to share their wisdom as outgoing awardees: Su Su Myat, Thiruppathi P, Petra Samaha, and Lu Wang. The new 2026 awardees were: Sherin Assaf, Hilda Owii, Sandeep Badole, Parian Hoseini, Palwasha Amanullah, Chebe Polycap, Riya Al’sanah, Soheila Shourbaji, Yuan Zhang. 

Eduardo Marques (IJURR Editor) and Barbara Lipietz shared information about the history of the Foundation and current activities from both the Foundation and Journal. Eduardo joined us from Brazil sporting a coat and scarf prompting those of us in the UK to dream of cooler days! 

Nihal co-ordinated the second half of the meeting and split everyone into break-out rooms. This was the most valuable part of the session were connections were made and important discussions held. Topics ranged from: next steps after a PhD, encouragement to keep applying for jobs, experiences of living abroad and feelings on returning home, challenges faced during fieldwork and writing up. 

Sherin Assaf fed back after the meeting: “I think the current cohort has particularly varied and honest stories to tell. In our welcome meeting alone I noticed this clearly. One awardee started her PhD in her home country, then had to relocate her entire research site due to the political situation there, which ended up giving her an unexpected outsider perspective on her host country. Another studying her own city described how the PhD made her see things she had always considered normal in a completely different way.”

Sherin added that the awardees she spoke to “Both had to extend their timelines due to circumstances entirely outside their research. In my own case, I came to France through a supervisor’s invitation rather than a plan I had made, and the war in Lebanon disrupted my fieldwork in ways I had to navigate in real time.”