Migration Research Unit

The Migration Research Unit (MRU) is a critical nexus for research on migration across UCL and includes as members researchers from the department of geography and from across the social sciences and humanities at UCL.  MRU members’ ongoing research contributes to key debates pertaining to diasporas and transnationalism, asylum and refugees, national and international migration policies, theorising movement and (im)mobilities, development and migration, and measuring and mapping migration.

The MRU was established by Professor John Salt in 1988, and currently brings together academics whose research also directly informs their teaching and supervision of research students, including students taking MSc Global Migration. The MRU hosts an annual student conference, and regularly organises seminars and conferences to engage with and advance understandings of experiences and processes of and responses to different forms of migration.

The MRU leads UCL's interdisciplinary research network on displacement and conflict, Refuge in a Moving World, which is an initiative of the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) in collaboration with the Institute of Global Prosperity (IGP). Refuge in a Moving World draws together experts on displacement, refugees and conflict from across UCL and coordinates conferences, seminars, and public events to promote a research-led conversation on these complex issues. The Refuge in a Moving World network is also coordinating a series of activities across UCL in support of refugees and forced migrants.