Children on the move, new ways of being
This panel discussion will explore how cities can respond to displacement and migration be it from conflict, climate change, precarity and other forms of violence and instability, with a particular focus on the impacts on young children and their families.
The talk will delve into displacement as a new way of being for many populations rather than a single event and look at work being done to measure and consider and respond to the wellbeing of people living in these conditions.
Meet our panel
Gabriella Brent, CEO at Amna Refugee Healing Network
Formerly Director of Programmes and Amna, Gabriella is a psychotherapist, organisational leader and mental health practitioner experienced in grief work and trauma care. She has developed and scaled community-led mental health approaches across family justice, criminal justice, mental health and social advocacy, working closely with communities to develop healing-centred programmes that break cycles of oppression and foster community resilience.
Lucy Earle, Director Human Settlements International Institute for Environment and Development
Lucy Earle’s work focuses on the intersections of urbanisation, urban poverty and humanitarian crises, in particular forced displacement into and within urban areas.
She is especially interested in understanding how refugees and internally displaced people navigate urban systems to meet their basic needs, and how displaced people can engage with local authorities to raise awareness of their needs, priorities and aspirations. She also works to change the narrative about where displaced people ‘belong’ – highlighting, through research and policy engagement, the potential benefits of hosting refugees and internally displacement people in towns and cities. Lucy has a background working on low-income housing, urban citizenship and the right to the city in the global South.
Samira Lahfa, Team Manager, Hackney Council Migrant Children and Families Team
Samira is a UK qualified social worker with a specialism in working with children and families, and child separated refugees. She has almost 20 years of experience working with displaced communities both in the UK and Internationally. She has worked for a range of UK Local Authorities, as well as a number of NGOS to create programmes around education, community engagement and health promotion. Demonstrating a strong commitment to human rights and supporting the most vulnerable and oppressed communities to be heard through a child-centred, trauma-informed and feminist approach.
Meet Our Moderator
Professor Catalina Ortiz, Professor of Critical Urban Pedagogy and UCL Urban Lab Director
Professor Catalina Ortiz is a Colombian urbanist and educator who is passionate about spatial justice. She is committed to an ethics of care and an engaged scholarship to trigger radical spatial imagination for a negotiated co-production of space. She uses decolonial and critical urban theory through creative methodologies to study the politics of space production to foster more just cities and the recognition of multiple urban knowledges. Her work revolves around critical urban pedagogies, planning for equality, and southern urbanisms. She is Director of the UCL Urban Lab at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London (UCL).
Meet our Chair
Katie Beck, Policy Fellow, LSE Cities
Katie is a Policy Fellow at LSE Cities where she manages the Urban95 Academy, working with an interdisciplinary team to help municipal leaders design more child-friendly cities.
Her areas of interest include gender-equal, child-friendly and care-centred city design and her independent research has looked at the gender dynamics of urban play spaces in east London analysing the spatial and social factors that impact access to and experience of public space.
Previous to joining LSE Cities Katie worked as a broadcast news producer, features writer and video journalist for BBC News for over a decade with postings in the USA, Australia, France, Israel and Palestine.
Katie holds an MSc in City Design and Social Science from the LSE and BA in Political Science and History from the University of California Santa Cruz.
Hashtag for this event: #Urban95Academy
More about the event
LSE Cities is an international centre that investigates the complexities of the contemporary city. It carries out research, graduate and executive education, engagement and advisory activities in London and abroad.
The Urban95 Academy is a fully funded leadership programme, delivered online over six weeks, to help city leaders design better cities for young children and their caregivers.
The Van Leer Foundation is an independent Dutch organisation working worldwide to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a good start in life. We inspire and inform large-scale action that improves the health and wellbeing of young children – especially the most vulnerable – and the people who care for them.
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