Cara 'Scotland and the North' Conference 2024

We were delighted to accept the offer from the University of Dundee to host this year's 'Scotland and the North' conference, which took place on 8 May with excellent participation from across the region.

After a welcome from Professor Kim Dale, Dundee's Assistant Vice Principal International, and an introduction to Cara's current work from our Director, Stephen Wordsworth, Cara Fellows from Syria and Afghanistan and a 'Researchers at Risk' Fellow from Ukraine outlined their own journeys to safety and how they were each now taking forward their academic careers.

After a break for lunch, two panel discussions considered how universities might best embed support for Cara into wider university strategies to assist exiled and refugee academics and students, and also what options were open to Fellows to continue their academic careers if, at the end of their initial Fellowships, it was still not safe for them to consider returning home.

In addition, Chris Goldie of Gifted Philanthropy described the work that he and his colleagues had done in 2023, with funding support from UUKi, to assess Cara's fundraising potential, and the work he was doing now, with Cara, to launch a series of networking / fundraising events at partner universities this summer and autumn, with more to follow in 2025.

We are very grateful to Kim Dale and the Dundee team for being such good hosts, and to our own Scotland Manager, Eilidh MacDonald at the University of Edinburgh, for her work in organising the event. We will be running a quick follow-up survey, to make next year's event even better.