Trust organises second UK lecture tour with British Council

London, 20 February 2019 – Building on experience in organising higher-education events in Istanbul, Amman, Beirut, London, Washington, and New York, the Alexandria Trust, through Al-Fanar Media and in collaboration with the British Council, invited two Syrian academics to the United Kingdom to speak about the state of Syrian higher education and the needs of individual professors and students to improve the quality of higher education.

This “lecture tour” builds on the experience of Al-Fanar Media and the British Council in organizing a May 2 conference on “Improving Educational Opportunities for Youth Inside Syria” in Beirut that included Syrian participation. Also, in October 2017, the Trust and the British Council organised the first UK lecture tour, where three Lebanese professionals who work with Syrian refugees came to the UK to speak at several universities to help raise awareness about the situation of Syrians in Lebanon and to see if such visits could be expanded as another way of providing information to donors, universities, and other interested parties.

As UK universities and others explore ways to connect to and support Syrian academics, the Trust believes that the best means of information gathering and exploration is face-to-face meetings and getting information directly from Syrian academics who work at Syrian universities.

The Trust and the British Council hope that this lecture tour will help to:

1. Raise awareness on the state of Syrian higher education and young people, and the limited access many Syrians students and professors have to international resources.
2. Generate new ideas on ways UK universities might collaborate with individual Syrian academics or support individual Syrian scholars and students without violating international sanctions, such as the opening up of online resources to Syrians.
3. Pave the way for future events, such as ones in Lebanon, Jordan, or the UK, which could result in further information exchange and planning of functioning partnerships that could support Syrian youth in their quest for education and strengthen and support Syrian professors in their desire to keep their disciplinary knowledge and understanding of teaching methods current.