Children on The Move, New Ways of Being Public Lecture

This panel discussion examined how cities can respond to displacement and migration arising from conflict, climate change, precarity, and other forms of violence and instability, with particular attention to the impacts on young children and their families. Speakers discussed how displacement is increasingly becoming an ongoing challenge for many communities rather than a single event, and highlighted efforts to understand and address the wellbeing of people living in these circumstances.

December 2, 2025

In this panel discussion, we explored Lucy Earl’s latest research on Urban Refugee Wellbeing, with a particular focus on her work in Kenya. The conversation offered insight into the intricate realities of living as a displaced person in urban contexts, highlighting the daily challenges refugees face as they navigate unfamiliar and often fragile city systems. Speakers examined how organisations and municipal authorities are responding to these needs, emphasising approaches that prioritise wellbeing, especially for children, who are often the most vulnerable in situations of displacement.

The recording can be found below.

Meet our panel

Gabriella Brent, CEO at Amna Refugee Healing Network

Formerly Director of Programmes at 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).